


To Leave the Best Untold

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Angst, Bisexuality, Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, F/F, Femslash, Fingerfucking, First Time, Masturbation, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Tension, Tribadism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:04:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10715490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: Separated from her husband and caring for two children, Lori Grimes is lonely, weary, and confused. Thank God for the babysitter who seems eager to help out and always available. Except the babysitter herself might turn out to be more confusing than ever - and exactly what Lori never knew she needed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story happened because of [this glorious anon,](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/149676014016/okay-but-i-had-a-thought-when-i-was-looking-at-a) (NSFW text) and in fact I'm basically using the rough plotline they've laid out, with some variations of my own (I think it might actually get kind of deep assuming I manage to keep writing it). So the real credit/blame should be laid at the feet of that wonderful stranger. I never would have written this at all if it wasn't for them. 
> 
> I should note that Beth is seventeen in here. I'm mostly not tagging it for underage because seventeen is above the age of consent in Georgia, among other reasons (another being that I don't think the line between a-few-months-from-eighteen and eighteen is why that warning exists). So just be aware of it if that kind of thing is an issue for you. Also, yeah, I've tagged Lori/Rick as a thing but I'm classifying this as solely F/F; that's because while Lori's strained relationship with Rick is definitely going to be an important element of the plot, the primary relationship I'm exploring really is between two women, and that relationship is the entire point of the story. 
> 
> I'm not expecting hardly anyone to read this, but people read my Daryl/Maggie thing, so who the hell knows. If you're giving it a shot, thank you so much, and I'm very interested to know what you think. ❤️

“Don't call him first. Alright?”

Paula’s eyes are unnaturally bright and hard in the light from the dashboard. Almost brittle in a way that makes Lori distinctly uncomfortable. She leans her brow on her hand and looks at Paula, looks away - at the house, the warmly lit windows and the equally warm porch light, brick and white pillars, the wide lawn and the actual honest-to-God picket fence. It appears so perfect, so cozy, so _idyllic_. It's not yet uncomfortably hot and the windows and the front door are open, nothing between the interior of the house and the early summer night but the screens.

She stood there at that screen door, the night he left - not physically, not then, but left all the same. Her hand and her head both resting on the frame, her nose still running and her eyes puffy, watching his back - which was all she could see. He was sitting on the steps, hunched over his knees, every part of his affect radiating exhaustion. He was tired a lot in those final days. More tired than angry - or his anger manifested as sullen weariness, and what she wishes she could have made him understand is that that was far worse than him exploding at her, doing like other men do, yelling and throwing things and punching walls.

Which he's never done. Which he would never do. And she never would have believed it would be something she would think about with grim wistfulness.

No. She didn't actually want that.

Christ’s sake, she just wanted him to _talk_ to her.

“I'm serious, Lori. Don't. He's gotta come to you.” Hand on Lori’s forearm. She doesn't jump but she stiffens, is immediately annoyed at herself. Annoyed at herself for being annoyed. She's not nearly drunk enough but she's drunker than she wants to be and Jesus, all she really wants is to crawl into her big empty bed and sleep.

 _Their_ bed. Yeah, not so much.

“I wasn't going to.” Sigh. “You want me to promise? Alright. I'll promise.”

Paula doesn't seem to be in a mood to let up, though she does withdraw her hand. “You go after him. You always do. You chase him around, take the pressure off him, and he never has to be the one to apologize first. He never proves anything. He wants this to work, you make him make you _believe_ it.”

This is an old pep talk - a very old _speech,_ because it stopped being peppy a long time ago, and it's nothing she doesn't already know. So she bobs her head a bit, her attention still settled on the house as Paula’s voice slips into a persistent background drone, and she tastes the sickly-sweet White Zinfandel on her lips when she licks them, and she thinks about staring at Rick’s impassive back and wondering whether she should finally…

Finally not be the one to make the first move.

She wasn't. She didn't. And look where it got them.

Shadow moving past one of the upstairs windows, blurred behind the semi-transparent curtain, but unmistakable: Carl. It's closing rapidly in on midnight, but she didn't actually expect him to be in bed and she's not going to be so hypocritical as to be angry at him for it.

If he's not taking this well, he's at least trying to fake it.

For her.

She swipes a hand down her face, offers a silent prayer of thanks that she stayed away from the reds tonight or the tannins would be hammering the inside of her head. Paula’s drone is winding down, approaching the finale. Lori tunes back in, turns to her, manages a tight smile and hopes the tightness is mostly hidden by shadow.

“I'll be fine. Look, I gotta… I need to pay the babysitter, she's already been here an hour longer than I told her.”

“Okay. Call me in the morning?” Paula touches her again - her hand, soft and fleeting, and suddenly Lori isn't annoyed anymore. Paula means nothing but good, always has, and she's been there for more than one late-night bitching session when Lori couldn't go to anyone else, sat there on her big soft sectional couch with their shoes off and their toenails drying and listened to Lori pour it all out there, pour it out like glass after glass of wine resting on her belly, and never judged. Always agreed. Always on Lori’s side, and that wasn't fair, but sometimes fair is overrated, and Lori is beginning to wonder if she's spent too much of her life caring about _fair_.

Paula is a friend, and right now she needs a friend like she probably never has before.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. She can't see herself, can't be sure, but it feels as though the tightness is easing out of her smile. “I will.”

Hand on the car door - she opens it and the slightly muggy night rushes in on her, smelling of cut grass and warm asphalt and full of the whispery chatter of cicadas in the trees. Paula is watching her as she climbs out of the car, brow furrowed; the first step Lori takes is noticeably unsteady until her head recovers equilibrium. She shoots Paula another smile, reaches down and clumsily pulls off her heels, lifts them with two fingers and waves them a little by way of farewell.

_See? I can be practical._

This is not practical.

Paula gives her a wave in return and pulls away from the curb, humming out into the gentle suburban night.

The babysitter has indeed stayed longer than was agreed upon and will indeed have to be paid extra. She should get inside, get Carl into bed, make sure Judy is fed and sleeping and then take care of herself. But for a few moments she stays where she is, standing barefoot in the cool grass with her shoes dangling by her side, abruptly uneasy in her unusually short skirt and tight pink blouse - maybe a tiny bit of spite in her wardrobe choices tonight, and now she doesn't feel so great about it. The house is dominating her field of vision. From where she's standing she can see part of the front hall, the clean white on white, the tasteful pictures on the walls.

You'd look at this house, and you'd never imagine anything was wrong inside those clean white walls.

She lowers her head, pinches the bridge of her nose.

_Girl, don't you dare pull out your goddamn phone._

She doesn't. She cross the grass to the front walk, the pavement pleasantly gritty beneath the soles of her feet, climbs the porch steps to her perfect house and the perfect family that should be waiting for her, and goes inside.

~

She's already opening her mouth to apologize as she enters the living room - trusting that there's no wobble in her gait, though it's a bit too late to do anything about it if there is. But when the girl curled on the loveseat looks up from her book, her smile is welcoming. If a bit sleepy.

“There you are. I was gonna call.”

“Yeah, I'm sorry, Beth.” Lori drops the shoes by the armchair opposite, fights back a wince when they hit the hardwood and make a louder clatter than she expected. But no fussing emerges from upstairs. She sinks into the chair, sets her purse down by her shoes, and sweeps her hair back from her face. “Lost track of the time. I haven't seen Paula in a while and we got talking.”

“It's okay, I needed to get some work done.” Beth pushes herself upright and yawns, arches her back in a stretch that seems to roll through her whole body. Lori’s attention shifts from her to the notebook open on the coffee table in front of her, which Beth has pulled close enough for use as a makeshift desk. She gives Lori a faintly rueful smile. “English test on Monday and I'm really behind.”

“What book?” Idle question, but she realizes she's genuinely interested. Perhaps because it's something to focus on that's not herself.

Beth holds up the book, and the title is legible enough from a few feet away.

_Leaves of Grass._

Lori releases a breath. “Haven't read that since college.”

“Did you like it?”

“Mm.” Noncommittal. If pressed, she would have to admit that she remembers little of it, minute fragments from a semester during which her motivation went slack and a lot of things slid between a lot of cracks. “It was alright. I guess, I wasn't paying so much attention right then.”

Beth cocks her head, curiosity obvious and genuine. “How come?”

“I…” She drifts to a halt. She has no reason to be getting this personal, would have expected to prefer not to. Ten minutes ago all she wanted was darkness and bed and the relief of a few hours of oblivion before Judy cries her awake. But the room is peaceful, the only sound aside from their voices the cicadas outside, and though the room itself is expansive and very bright in the daytime, in the low light from the lamp on the end table by the loveseat it feels pleasantly enclosed. Secluded. The rest of the world can't reach her here.

So what the hell.

“It was a weird time.” She pauses, her fingers picking at each other. Her nails need filing. She's let them go. “I wasn't sure what I wanted. I went in thinking I was gonna get married right after, maybe even before I graduated, but… I dunno. I got to be a junior, I looked around at everyone else making all these big plans, and I wondered about it.”

“Like maybe you'd be missin’ out?” Beth says quietly, and Lori’s gaze flicks up to her face. Her blue eyes are half shadowed by a few loose locks of her hair, yet very clear. “Like there was stuff you wouldn't be able to do?”

Yeah. “Yeah.” A little smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, and there's something in it that she's not sure she could define. “I got over it, though.”

“Hm.”

Lori can't fully interpret the sound. Beth’s head is cocked again, her expression thoughtful - Lori is being studied, she's certain of that much, and she's also not certain what she feels about it. What Beth thinks of that answer.

Whether that's a flicker of doubt Lori is seeing behind her eyes.

_Or whether you're projecting. You know you do that._

She shifts in the chair, reaches for her purse and rummages for her wallet. “But you're feeling better? About the test?”

“Yeah. And I do like it.” Beth opens the book at the place she’d marked with her thumb and reads aloud, her voice soft and musical.

> _Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you._  
>  _You must travel it by yourself._  
>  _It is not far. It is within reach._  
>  _Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know._  
>  _Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land._

That musical voice floats into silence, and the silence spreads out. At some point it comes to Lori that she's sitting frozen in mid-rummage, watching Beth as she drops her gaze and sets the book into her lap, a kind of shyness washing over her. With her head down like that and strands of her hair lying against her cheeks, her loose green tank top hanging off her petite frame, she looks even younger than her seventeen years - young and somehow unreal. As if she's painted, as still and delicate as she is.

Lori was never like that. She's certain. She was never that young or that delicate, or that pretty, and something small is twisting beneath her breastbone.

“Yeah.” She clears her throat. “That's… that's nice.”

“Anyway. You gotta be tired, I'll get outta here.” Beth leans forward and picks up her backpack, stuffing her books into it. “Judith went down a couple hours ago, she wasn't any trouble.” She glances up, smiling again. “She's a sweet baby.”

“Yeah. She is.” Lori fingers through the bills and pulls out three, gets to her feet and walks over, holding them out. Beth rises and takes them, looks down, and looks back up, her eyes wider.

“This is seventy dollars, Lori, we said fifty and-”

Lori waves a hand. “You stayed late.”

“Not _that_ late.”

“Call it time and a half.”

Beth opens her mouth, closes it again. Shrugs, folds up the bills and stuffs them into the pocket of her jeans. “Well. Thanks. Seriously, thanks a lot.”

“Sure.” She stops, at a loss for what to say next, feeling unaccountably awkward as Beth shoulders her backpack. She went from comfortably buzzed to stone sober in the span of about ten minutes, and it's odd. “Can you get home okay on your own? Do you need to call someone?”

“I’ll be fine. I can walk, it's only a mile or so.”

Lori frowns. It's a safe enough area, but it's late on a Friday, and the feeling that this might be irresponsible on her part is gnawing at her. “You sure?”

“Yeah. It's a nice night and I like to walk.” She straightens her pack and starts toward the front hall. Not sure what else to do, Lori follows.

Jesus, it's not as if she's never had a damn babysitter before.

At the door, Beth stops and turns back, and there's a subtle strange quality to the set of her features, the look in her eyes. A hint of her own awkwardness. “Um… If you, y’know, need someone to watch ‘em again, gimme a call? They were nice, and.” She rolls a shoulder, corner of her mouth curling. “I like your house.” She hesitates. “Sorry, that sounded weird.”

“No. No, it's fine.” It did, but not _bad_ weird, and in any case… In any case it's all weird. No clear reason why, but it is. “I'll do that. Thanks, Beth.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Her teeth briefly catch her lip, another hesitation almost too brief to be perceived, and then she turns, opens the door, steps out onto the porch and glances back, raising her hand in a little wave. “G’night, Lori.”

“G’night.”

She stands at the door, tracking Beth as she passes from patch after patch of streetlight illumination, until she turns the corner at the end of the block and vanishes. And then she stands there for a while longer, gazing into the dark, turning her phone over and over in her hand.

Her phone. She doesn't remember taking it out of her purse with the money, but she must have, and suddenly it's heavier than it has any right to be. She turns it over, thumbs it on, squints at it until she sets the brightness at a reasonable level.

One call. She missed it. No voice message. She stares at it for a moment or two, as if it might become something else.

Wishful thinking. She closes her eyes, her jaw clenched. So is she authorized to call him back? In Paula’s Marriage Separation Rules of Engagement, is that permissible? No. She can hear her already. _This time of night? When it might have been him calling you all drunk and sad to soften you up? Get you to forgive everything? No way, honey. You let him stew._

He wouldn't be drunk. Not Rick. And he wouldn't look _to soften her up,_ not like that. But he would be so sad, and she would listen to him, and one way or another it would break her down. And in the end, it would be the same goddamn thing all over again, and none of it will have stopped. Sooner or later they'll climb back on this merry-go-round and ride to nowhere.

 _Shit_.

With an angry jerk of her hand, she tosses the phone onto the end table by the door, turns on her heel and marches toward the stairs. Bed. She said she wanted bed, promised it to herself, and that's what she's going to have. Get Carl into his own bed, do her best to make him understand how much she loves him and how sorry she is about this, check on Judy, then collapse and sleep.

In that big bed, empty but for her. Cold no matter how warm the night is. Not that it wasn't getting chilly before he was even gone.

 _I know,_ Paula murmurs. _I know. It would be a helluva lot easier if you didn't love him so much._

Well. Nothing she can do about that. She wipes the tears away from her eyes with firm fingers as she climbs upward, past an ascending row of happy family photographs. It was never going to be easy. She should have known that. She knew who he was when she said _I do._

_One thing you gotta bear in mind, girl. Whether or not you end up takin’ him back… you deserve better._

_You do._

~

But she can't sleep.

Speaking of _unfair_. She lies there, sheets tangled around her bare legs and her silky sleep shorts pushed up uncomfortably tight in the creases of her inner thighs, and she gazes up at the ceiling with one arm slung across her forehead, listening to the ticking of the alarm clock. It's an antique deal, glass and polished brass, and she hated the alarm so much that she made Rick disable it, but she likes the clock itself. She's always liked old things. Something about them makes her feel grounded. Makes her feel connected.

Now she feels as disconnected as she ever has.

She puffs out a sigh, grits her teeth. She hasn't slept well since he left - which means nearly a week of nights broken by more than Judy - and she wasn't sleeping so well even before then. Before the wedding she made a private promise to never go to bed angry at him, but promises are fragile things, and it had stopped being the exception and become the rule. And now she's angry again, angry at that missed call, angry at him for not leaving a message, angry at him for everything and angry at herself for being angry, and it's all she can do to keep from throwing the damn phone against the wall and having done with it.

No. It's not the phone’s fault. The phone has never done anything to her.

With a movement that feels irritatingly childish, she kicks off the sheets and lies spread-eagle. She's gotten sweaty and hadn't noticed, but now the night air through the windows feels good on her skin, and she finds herself calming, her knotted muscles loosening. There's a bottle of Xanax in the medicine cabinet but every time she uses it she feels guilty, like she's failing on some kind of deeply personal level, and she just…

She just wants to _sleep_.

One thing might help her. No chemical component, at least no chemical that her body doesn't produce on its own, and it's fairly reliable. Reliable enough to be worth the trying.

She hasn't touched herself since he left and her bed got a lot emptier. That part of her seemed to shut down. But before, if she was forced into honesty, she would admit that she was depending on it more and more to get her through those bad nights. They weren't having sex at all by then, and she found the unused energy building in her in a bizarrely heated way, close to anger in itself though not quite, an all-purpose general frustration. Which she released after he was asleep, lying well on her side of the bed, her fingers working beneath the hem of her pajamas. She learned to do it fast, quick circles over her clit until her nerves clenched and burst into brightness, and she bit the insides of her cheeks and came silently, as far as she knows never waking him.

Or he pretended. Facing away from her and feeling the mattress tremble as she gave herself the release he wasn't giving her.

It worked. It might work now. At any rate her legs are spreading as her hand slides downward and in, over her curls and her mound to the lips of her cunt. No inclination to be slow; this is functional. This is a means to an end and nothing more. But she gasps when her fingertips graze her clit and it jolts her, more than she expected, and she nudges her lips apart and slips her fingers through a welling of slickness.

Why the hell is she this _wet?_

It's half curiosity and half something she couldn't name, that she's doing more than she usually does. Giving herself more. Shimmying her shorts down and pressing lightly at her entrance, her legs spread even wider. Her breath catches and she bites back a moan as she pushes into herself, curls her finger, wiggles it slightly and sighs into the warmth as it pulses through her. More wet, squelching quietly as she withdraws her finger and pushes back in, and she only realizes that her other hand has worked its way beneath her camisole when her finger and thumb close around her nipple and pinch.

Another pinch and then loosening, gliding back and forth over the tightening bud as she starts to really finger herself, really get down to business, her legs rising and knees bending. It's so good, better than she can remember in such a long time, maybe better than the last time Rick actually fucked her, her mouth falling open as her moan finally breaks through. Her clit is pounding with heat and her hips jerk every time she brushes it with her thumb, until she can't take it anymore and she transfers her slippery fingers to it and rubs in increasingly rapid circles, hissing breath through her teeth.

God, she's close. She's so close. She can think about him, that's not giving in; she can think about his delightfully long fingers and his skilled tongue, the way he sucks her tits, the way he especially seemed to love doing it after she gave birth - both times - luxuriating in the way it was slightly dirty, slightly wrong. And now he's got those fingers buried in her cunt, his lips around her nipple, and he's-

Slender fingers. Little fingers. A soft little mouth sucking, eager little tongue lapping at her, and a smooth, petite body lying against hers, undulating with its own pleasure.

_G’night, Lori._

She doesn't know when she last came so hard.

It slams her into the mattress and then _again,_ over and over, her head bouncing off the pillow and her toes curling and uncurling as her legs shiver and flex. She's covering her own mouth to muffle her cry, biting the heel of her palm, and it's like something blooming inside her, exploding into a riot of colors and leaving her limp and heaving, sweat beaded and cooling on her skin.

She thought she was sweaty before.

Once more she's staring into the darkness. Staring wide-eyed, shuddering with aftershocks - and not only with those.

Trembling.

It's just because she's a wreck. She's a wreck and she’s angry and lonely, and she's as confused as she's ever been - as confused as she was that semester when she was supposed to read and barely read the book Beth is reading now.

That semester, that one time with Annie, the girl from down the hall. She and Rick fought over the phone, she was mad and looking to vent, Annie got her drunk, got herself drunk, and they messed around. They never got naked. Barely did anything at all. It was nice enough, and there was no repeat of it, and she never wanted it again. Things like that happen in college; she knows that. It doesn't have to mean anything.

It didn't. She hasn't thought of it in years. So this doesn't mean anything either. She wanted to get off, she got herself off, it's over. Now she can sleep.

_So go the hell to sleep._

She turns over and pulls the sheet back up without bothering with her shorts. She’ll worry about them when she has to get up, and if there's any mercy in the world, that won't have to be for four or five hours.

And she does sleep. Eventually. But before she does, halfway down, she realizes that she's sucking at her sticky fingers. Licking up the evidence of her climax.

Like she's got something to hide.

_G’night, Lori._

Yeah. That would be nice.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much as she would prefer it, Lori's unsettling slip of the mind hasn't vanished with the morning. If anything, everything is even more unsettled than before. A husband she desperately wants to forgive isn't helping matters. Yet not all the unsettling is necessarily bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what this is starting to feel vaguely reminiscent of? 
> 
> I think a lot of you probably do. By the end of this chapter if you haven't already. Or if you haven't seen me yelling about it on Tumblr. 
> 
> The reaction to this so far as made me beyond happy and more than a little surprised. Thank you guys so much. ❤️

She has no idea how much stewing Rick was or wasn't doing, and how hot and with which ingredients and how many of them, how close it was or wasn't to bubbling over, and there are a lot of places she could take that particular analogy, but the point is that the next morning, while she's standing in the kitchen in her robe and making coffee, he does call again.

The coffee is getting made with their new coffeemaker. Or reasonably new. Valentine’s Day gift from him, one of those things with the little sealed plastic cups. Paula and a couple of the other women in the neighborhood she sometimes gets together with - the mothers of kids who used to have frequent play dates with Carl - had scoffed at it as insufficiently romantic, but she hadn't agreed with them. She savors her morning cup of coffee, and their old coffeemaker had been near to finally giving up the ghost. It was thoughtful of him. It was sweet. And she appreciates practicality, much as she wouldn't mind a little genuine romance now and then.

Regardless, it might be somewhat appropriate that he chooses right then to call her.

Early Saturday morning, quiet. She has less of a headache and is less generally tired than she was afraid of. But she jumps a little when her phone jangles and buzzes against the countertop, and as she reaches for it, she already knows who it's going to be.

If he was stewing, one night is enough without giving him some relief - if indeed it'll be that for him. Talking to him isn't the same as _all is forgiven._

And she'll have to do it anyway, eventually.

“Hi.”

Brief pause on the other end. Then: “ _Hi._ ” He sounds slightly gravelly. As though he hasn't slept much, if at all.

She waits. She's got enough control here to let him figure out how he wants to launch this conversation. Signal what he wants from it.

“ _How're you doing?_ ”

Okay. Neutral, and carefully so. Is he afraid she might hang up on him? They've had one phone call since he left for the little family-owned motel across town where he's presumably still camped, and it lasted less than five minutes, but she wasn't the one to end it. Though he didn't exactly cut it off hard.

She draws a slow breath. “I'm fine. Went out with Paula last night, it was nice.” Not impossible that that's a subtle dig at him. _Look, I'm having fun without you._ Only it's not _fun,_ and he’ll be perceptive enough to tell. Or at least make a solid guess.

“ _Good. That's good._ ” And goddammit, she knows he's sincere. Sincere enough. There's a heavier quality to his voice, a greater degree of _worn-down,_ but he's not resentful. She’s honestly not sure what she could do to make him resentful. Angry, sure. Frustrated, exasperated, nagged to the point of madness, but Rick Grimes doesn't do resentment. She doesn't think it's in his nature. “ _How about Judy and Carl? They doing alright?_ ”

And now she knows why he called so early, or at any rate what part of his motivation for doing so is. Good odds that Carl won't be up yet; he's now old enough to value sleeping in. There won't be that awkward point where she has to decide whether or not to offer Carl the phone, and they'd both have to face how Carl would respond, deal with whatever the aftermath might be, and there are no good options here.

He's trying to spare himself. But he's also - maybe even more - trying to spare her.

He's a good man, she loves him so much, she's so mad at him, and this is so awful.

“They're doin’ good. Carl’s itching to be done.” Another couple weeks of school, then a long, precious summer. She smiles faintly and it hurts the smallest bit, and glances at the kitchen table, where - mixed in with a few bills, yesterday’s paper, a couple of shopping fliers and a permission slip for Carl’s science class trip to the state park - she's left two brochures she's been flipping speculatively through. “I'm not. I'm thinkin’ we should see about sending him to camp again.”

“ _What’re you looking at?_ ” He sounds more at ease. This is neutral enough as topics go, it's something they've never clashed over, and it's _Carl,_ and whatever they've fought about before now, Carl at least was never part of it.

“He really liked Camp Dixie. You remember. The canoeing especially.”

Rick snorts a laugh. “ _He said he fell in. Twice._ ”

“Yeah, well.” Her smile widens, hurts more, and she can't keep it back, and she doesn't want to. “He also said he had fun with it anyway, and that play they did, so I'm gonna float the idea and see what he says.”

“ _He'll go. Give you some peace._ ” He stops, and the silence is twisting back into discomfort. _Peace._ Sort of. All by herself, except for a baby not even a year old, and while in some ways she can see herself enjoying a kind of freedom…

He knows her better than that.

A couple weeks, though. That's some time. Could be enough. Shit, she has no idea, and she braces herself one-handed on the counter and stares out the window, watching without truly seeing as the sprinkler rises and falls gently across the lawn, droplets glittering in the sun. Across the street, Mrs. Coleman walking her ancient German Shepherd. Bees humming lazily around the patch of Purple Coneflower in the front garden.

Everything _looks_ exactly like it should. Everything looks perfect.

“Rick?” Her lip finding its way between her teeth. _God, please for once in your life. Please be the one who comes to me._ “Are you ready to talk?”

Silence.

She can't even hear him breathing. Somehow that's beyond distressing; it twists at her, jabs her gut like a pointing finger, and she closes her eyes and feels the cool formica warming beneath her hand and once more curses the very existence of phones, of distance, of the dense soundlessness that is dead air. Though if he was here in front of her, she has no notion whatsoever of what she would do.

Soft hiss of the sprinkler. The leaves whisper in the wind.

Finally: “ _I'll call you later, Lori._ ” Then, as her hand tenses into a claw and her nails scrape across the countertop, “ _I love you._ ”

“I love you too,” she breathes, absolutely no hesitation, and then he's gone and the air really is dead, and she drops the phone onto the counter and turns around and walks to the kitchen table, drops into a chair, and buries her face in her hands.

~

There's a wild, ridiculous moment about five minutes before Carl comes downstairs where she gets up, goes back to the counter, and picks up the phone. Looks at it for what feels like a long time but can't be more than a minute or so. Opens up her contacts and rolls through them until she gets to the Gs, and there she lingers on a name, looking down at the number while something she couldn't begin to explain to herself flutters just above her diaphragm.

Not Paula. Normally she would call Paula. Maybe not now but later, vent again - the same old shit for the millionth time because it never changes - and feel marginally better for a while. But this must not be _normal_ because that's not whose number her thumb is hovering over.

She doesn't want someone to talk to. That's not what she wants. Or that's not all.

_So what, then?_

She puts the phone down - carefully, quietly - and goes to the fridge to get some eggs.

~

Carl seems less enthusiastic about camp than she was hoping. She gets the sense, sitting there with him while he eats scrambled eggs half drowned in ketchup and she works through her second cup of coffee, that he's beginning to consider himself a little too old for camp - this despite the fact that a couple of boys a grade ahead of him went to the same place last summer and apparently had a blast. But he's not exactly resistant, either, and he looks at the brochure, notes the new features - an archery range, an overnight wilderness hike - and seems to perk up. Seems open to it. And then something seems to occur to him that makes him even more interested, a flash of realization behind his eyes that she doesn't miss and doesn't ask him about.

Rick was right. He’ll go. Only now he has reasons for wanting to get away from the house - get away from _her_ \- that she would rather he not have at all.

There's only so much she can do. There's only so much she controls.

So after Carl goes out to ride bikes with Stevie from the next block over, she makes the necessary calls.

~

Around noon, Carl still gone and Judy fed and napping upstairs, she's kneeling in the back garden with a trowel in her gloved hand when something makes her look up.

She doesn't know what it is. She never figures it out later. She only knows that she raises her head, her other hand pressed to the top of her big floppy sun hat to keep it on her head as a warm breeze sweeps across the yard - that hat, Rick never failed to laugh gently at her when she wore it and she has never, ever minded - and she finds herself gazing up at the clear blue sky, almost as if she expects to see something. Though she hasn't the first clue what it might be.

Nothing. Then a flock of starlings lifts itself from the tree in the next yard - a big old oak with sprawling branches - and blooms into the air like a single unified thing, a graceful dark entity spreading itself into the light before swirling and descending to a tree a few yards over, vanishing into the leaves.

She stays where she is for a moment or two after, eyes locked on the place where they were, where they opened into the sky. Very, very slightly, she's trembling. That flutter is back, like her own flock of starlings is trapped inside her, beating their wings against the walls of her chest and desperate to get free.

She lowers her head and looks at her hands. Then, in a furious surge of movement, she drops the trowel into the dirt and pulls off the gloves, flings them into the grass with something like contempt, and with a sharp breath she bends over her pink begonias and purple asters to shove her bare hands deep into the cool, soft soil.

It accepts her.

~

So then she's at the library.

Judith is in a sling in front of her, tiny hands curled on beneath Lori’s collarbones as she looks around at everything with intense blue infant interest. She's graciously picked right now to be in a good mood, but as Lori heads down the row of shelves, scanning the titles, she's filled with sudden and unwelcome apprehension. What if it's checked out? At least one English class at the high school assigned it and everyone will be stressing over final exams; it very possibly has been. If it has, though, so what? She can go to a damn bookstore. There are at least three in easy driving distance, a couple more if you count the mall. But somehow the thought of that…

Like she would be making herself face down something she's not at all certain she wants to.

But it's there. Right there at eye level; here are in fact three different editions, and she picks one at random and heads back to the front desk. Walking a little fast, she's aware. As if she'd like to get out of there as quickly as possible. As if she'd like to avoid being seen by anyone she knows too well.

If she is, no one comes over to talk to her. In ten more minutes she's home.

~

Swing on the back porch, her bare legs crossed. Glass of lemonade sweating on the folding table beside her. Crackers and cheese: brie. A lot of brie. Life is frankly beating up on her; she won't whine about it but she’ll allow herself some damn cheese.

Book open in her lap. She's eating with her fingers, trying not to get brie on the pages. Working cheese out from under her fingernails with her teeth.

> _I will sleep no more but arise,_  
>  _You oceans that have been calm within me! how_  
>  _I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing_  
>  _unprecedented waves and storms._

The sun is slowly melting the brie onto the plate, the ice in the glass. It's so slippery when she picks it up that she nearly drops it. The cicadas are like tiny points of comfortable pressure working over her temples. Eyes shut and everything red through her lids, she licks salty cream off her fingertips. 

~ 

Two weeks. More of the same. Judy goes through a phase where she refuses to sleep more than a couple hours at a stretch, then shifts into sleeping through practically the entire night. Lori calls Paula, Paula comes over for two evenings of wine and co-bitching and _The Real Housewives of Atlanta_ , but no more nights out. Rick calls three more times, and it doesn't go much better than it did before, though it also doesn't go much worse. Carl does talk to him the third time, and it's awkward and stilted but it, too, could have been worse. Carl has made it to the finish line with decent grades; she tells him she's proud of him and she means it. 

Always does. Always is. 

It's getting warmer and warmer, and the evenings are long and lazy. Good evenings for sitting on the back porch swing and watching the sky darken, sometimes reading and sometimes not, cool wet glasses of various things in her slick hands. 

She doesn't make herself come every night. But she does it more than a few times, and she's careful as she can be to think as little as possible while she does. 

Just to be safe.

Mid-afternoon on Carl’s last day of school - a June Friday, the kind of Friday where you can feel every kid living in a ten mile radius holding their collective breath and watching a minute hand tick down - Rick calls and suggests, hesitantly but with determination that he's clearly spent some time working himself up to, that maybe they could take Carl out to dinner on Saturday. For him. That's all. 

Unsaid: _I want to see you but I think this might be all either of us can handle._

Which she knows - she _knows -_ isn't completely fair to Carl. Because it's about him but it's not, but then again, she must be an idiot if she thinks they can somehow separate Carl from the mess they're in, even if they never do fight about him. 

So what's worse? Taking him out with both of them? Only one of them taking him out? Not taking him out at all? Pizza and cake at home? Not doing anything? 

Part of her knows it's almost definitely a bad idea. Or it sure as hell isn’t a good one. It's ill-advised. There are a lot of ways in which it could go wrong. 

But maybe it won't, and she says okay. And she asks Carl. And when Carl shrugs and scuffs his sneakers and says okay, sure, he guesses that would be alright, there's one more number she calls. 

Why, no, Beth isn't doing anything tomorrow night at all. She'll be happy to come by.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lori has her share of misgivings about taking Carl out to dinner with Rick, and not without reason. But that might not be the only thing she should reserve her misgivings for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being so long that for structural reasons I broke it up; I'll post the second (shorter) bit soon. 
> 
> I want to explicitly say at this point that _I know and own how unhealthy a relationship like this would probably be in real life._ I am not in favor of it. I do not think it's good. This is fantasy, and as such I'm tossing _good_ off a goddamn dock. Maybe this shouldn't even be the kind of thing I need to clarify, but I'm doing so anyway.
> 
> That being said, enjoy. ❤️

They're meeting Rick at the restaurant. His suggestion; Lori is glad he was the one to put it between them, because she'd like to believe she would have but she has her doubts. And him coming here, even to pick them up… No. She wants to drive Carl on her own. Needs to. It's an ugly thing to her, to confront that she feels like she needs that much control. Like there's something here that she doesn't fully trust.

She's always trusted him. She's been pissed as hell at him, has wanted to scream at him until his goddamn ears bleed, but she's always, _always_ trusted him. 

Possibly it's not him that she doesn't trust. 

She's already dressed and downstairs and waiting for Carl when she glances in the mirror by the door - and stops, realizing what she's done. Because she's taking her son out to a celebratory dinner at a TGI Friday’s, with no other company except her husband, and yet she's gotten herself dressed not at all unlike how she did to go out with Paula. Sleeveless white blouse with a lower neckline than she usually sports, mother-of-pearl earrings that dangle from each lobe in three iridescent droplets, tight jeans. Makeup: her eyelids finely but deeply lined, lips delicately shimmering pink. Not quite MILF territory, she doesn't think, but even so. 

Is this for his benefit? Is she rubbing something in his face? _Look what you could have if you weren't such an impossible asshole?_ Shit, maybe. 

Maybe. 

Then the doorbell rings, and she's glad to leave the mirror and answer it. 

It's more than a warm night; it's a _hot_ night, nearly hot enough for the AC instead of the humming ceiling fans, and Beth is standing there in a pale yellow tank top much like the one she wore last time she was here, but also in a frankly tiny pair of cut-offs that accentuate her already long legs and make them seem longer. They're muscular, too, and Lori wonders vaguely whether she swims or runs track or something, realizes that she actually knows almost nothing about this girl other than the recommendation she got from Stevie’s mother. And it's not that she _has_ to know, but. 

Beth smiles. There's a book under her arm, and Lori doesn't need to see the title to know what it is. There's a kind of predictability about this, something a little like a dream. “Hi.” 

She's staring. She shouldn't stare at attractive youth; it's pathetic, and she can feel a blush threatening, and that would be tricky to explain, so _cut it out._ She returns the smile and steps aside, tipping her head inward. “C’mon in.” 

Beth steps past her and into the hall, tipping Lori another smile as she tosses her blond ponytail over her shoulder with an easy flip. “You look really pretty.” 

The blush threatens harder, and she has to battle back the weird and weirdly intense urge to run upstairs to change, wipe off the lip gloss. “Uh. Thanks.” 

“You said only Judith this time?” 

“Yeah. And Carl’s dad and I are just taking Carl out to dinner, so it shouldn't be too late.” 

It hits her like a dull slap, what she's said: _Carl’s dad and I._ Not _Rick and I._ Not _me and my husband._ She knows this kind of phrasing from a hundred depictions of divorce, fictional and not, and it weights her stomach with lead and makes her swallow a wince. 

And the second thing, which it's bizarre she hasn't thought of before now, at least with Beth, though it's come up in her mind in plenty of other places: precisely how much does Beth know? How much are people talking? They _are_ talking; they have to be, even if there's no malice in it. Something like this in a nice little Southern neighborhood like this is, it gets around as a matter of course, sure as a common cold in an elementary school burns through the population. She was that nice Officer Grimes’s wife, and now that status is far less clear and far less certain than it was, and while one thing she _does_ know about Beth is that she and her family are relative newcomers, even newcomers hear things down the grapevine. 

If they're talking about her, they're pitying her. Now she thinks about Beth pitying her and for some reason it's almost more than she can stand. 

But when Beth reaches the stairs by the entryway to the living room and turns to her, Lori can detect no trace of pity in her clear blue eyes. 

“Take as long as you want. I got nowhere else to be tonight.” She flashes a grin. “And my sister let me have the car. For once.”

Lori nods. “I'll text when we’re on the way back.” She leans up the stairs. “Carl!” 

But Carl is already on his way down, clumping on each step with an unnaturally heavy gait, and while he's not pouting as he passes her with a quick nod at Beth… God, it would be easier if he was. Because pouting is a kid thing. Familiar. It puts her into Mom Mode, and she knows what to do with that. Carl’s face is _stony,_ subtly but noticeably, and it's not at all a childish look on him. 

And for the first time, she genuinely considers the possibility that this is taking something away from him. Or pushing him into something he shouldn't reach yet. Too early, too soon. 

He had seemed okay with dinner before. But he's had some time between then and now to think about it, turn it over in his head. What it might end up being like and what it means, the things she and Rick aren't telling him, because they don't know how and they're both a couple of goddamn cowards, and on some level he must know them anyway, because children are neither as stupid nor as oblivious as adults would like to believe. 

After a few frozen seconds, she realizes that she's staring after him as he walks out the door and down the porch steps toward the car, no longer heavy-footed but with his head down and his shoulders hunched in a way she finds profoundly familiar. 

“Anythin’ else I need to know?” Beth’s voice is soft, a little hesitant. Lori might not know her that well, but it's easy enough to tell that Beth is also neither stupid nor oblivious, and yes, she’ll be more than capable of drawing her own conclusions regarding whatever she hasn't heard already. 

Well. Nothing to be done.

“No. No, everything’s the same as last time. Baby food’s in the cabinet, you should probably feed her in about an hour.” Delivered in a low voice, more toneless than she likes though she does manage to give Beth a faint smile as she moves toward the door. “Take whatever you want in the fridge. Call me if you have any problems.” 

She starts down the steps after Carl, her car keys clenched in one hand and the fingernails of her other - filed, lacquered pastel pink because why stop at her clothes and her face - digging into her palm. This was a mistake; they're not even there yet but she can already tell, can feel it building like ozone in the air before a storm, and by the time they get home she's going to regret it. But she can't pull out now. She's trapped herself. 

Not the first time that's happened. Won't be the last. 

~ 

It was a mistake. She does regret it.

But not because there's a fight. There isn't. There's no explosion, and not even any real tension. It's just awkward, unbearably so, both of them sitting in the booth with Carl and trying like hell to pretend that everything is normal, and Carl is mostly silent and barely makes eye contact, which leaves her and Rick to fumble around with conversation between the two of them. Carefully neutral conversation, just like on the phone. Carefully emerging from behind their separate trench walls of pain and venturing into the demilitarized zone.

War metaphors are never helpful, no matter how apt. 

As far as _pain_ goes, it rockets through her the second she sees him standing there by the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, all neat and clean-cut and looking every bit the Good Southern Boy she married, and there's a ripple behind his features and through his eyes that she knows is his version of the same feeling. That he's seeing the same thing. This disorienting moment of partial time travel, back to when a lot of things were a lot simpler, or it was easier to believe they were. 

And then they're splitting some barbecue chicken flatbread and trying to talk to Carl about _camp._

It’s a mistake, because all it does is remind her of just how deep this whole _fucked up mess_ actually goes. 

The three of them have a monstrous hot chocolate brownie with mounds of ice cream. It's a sticky overly sweet nightmare. They say goodnight. Carl is angry at her, in his Carl way, which involves a lot of silence and no eye contact whatsoever. Driving home, with him staring out the window at the passing lights on the highway, she has one of the worst moments she's had in a long time - so bad that, seconds later, she's not positive she had it at all. 

She looks at the high wall of the noise barrier, the tawny color gone gray, the pebbly texture lit up by her headlights, and she considers how easy it would be to swing the wheel to the right and send them crashing straight into it and then neither of them would ever have to deal with this again. 

She pulls in a breath, incredibly deep, incredibly slow. Her hands are shaking. 

Everything is shaking. 

~ 

She calls goodnight after Carl as he heads up the stairs - quietly, no stomping - and he gives her a grunt, so that's something. The fact is, she thinks as she slings her purse strap over the end of the banister, this isn't the angriest he's ever been at her, and it's not the only time he's gone upstairs in sulky silence. On paper, it's not that bad. Except that's the coldest comfort possible, and she's raking both hands through her hair, nails scratching across her scalp, as she makes her way into the living room. 

Beth on the loveseat, curled with her book, bare legs drawn up and her phone on the coffee table in front of her. The ceiling fan is stirring the loose strands of her hair, teasing them against her temples and cheeks and neck, and as she looks up, she swipes them absently away from her face. She's opening her mouth, starting to smile-

And she stops. Freezes, then her mouth closes again, her eyes widening slightly. 

Lori merely looks back at her. No point in wondering what she sees. One way or another, she almost certainly sees everything. 

“Lori?” 

Another breath. Normally she would be aghast at herself for suggesting this, for the rank irresponsibility and the faltering morals, but this is not _normal,_ nothing is _normal,_ she's already regretting everything, she's a failure as a wife and a mother, and she doesn't give one particle of a shit. 

“I'm gonna get some wine.” She pauses a beat. “You want some wine?” 

_Great. You're self-medicating and you're trying to give a seventeen-year-old girl alcohol. Real classy, keep it up._ Not Paula’s voice. She doesn't know who that is. Except that it sounds vexingly like her mother. 

_Fuck off._

“Lori,” Beth says hesitantly, “I mean… I really shouldn't-” 

Lori is already across the room and making a beeline for the kitchen. Beth doesn't say anything else, and doesn't try any harder to stop her. 

Later, much later, she’ll wonder how much of a difference it would have made if she had. 

~ 

_What are you doing._

In the kitchen, pulling two long-stem glasses out of the cabinet and and a bottle of half-finished Pinot Grigio out of the fridge, the voice echoes against the walls of her skull, whispers out through her ears. Not Paula, not her mother, and not asking a question. No upward inflection. This is more of a statement, and the voice doesn't sound at all surprised by this turn of events. 

She firmly ignores it and uncorks the bottle. 

_Seriously, Lori, you need to stop and think about this for ten seconds. Once you do something like this, you can't undo it. It's always going to have happened._

What? Giving wine to a minor, at least a minor where wine is concerned? Why should that be any kind of a big deal? She drank underage. So did Rick. So did everyone. Cheap beer at high school parties was practically a given, though no one she knew binged to a dangerous degree. Her morals weren't hopelessly corrupted afterward. 

_You sure about that?_

Any rate, from what she's seen, Beth’s morals seem perfectly solid. 

She pours out the wine. Big glasses; she makes use of the rest of the bottle. Instantly the glass is foggy with condensation, beaded wet, and she gazes at them for a few seconds, noting that with a few adjustments the wine would be very close to the hue of Beth’s hair. Shining and smooth. 

She bends and rummages in another cabinet, pulls out a bag of mini dark chocolate bars. Considers a plate, then figures that Beth is unlikely to give a shit about presentation and tucks the bag under her arm. With a glass in each hand, she reenters the living room. 

Beth is waiting for her, sitting upright with her small hands clasped between her knees, her stray hair tucked behind her ears. She looks up as Lori comes in, an uncertain little smile on her face as her focus shifts to the glasses. “Lori, you really don't have to-” 

“No. You don't have to.” But she's standing in front of Beth and holding out the glass. Trying to return the smile and failing. “You ever have wine before?” 

Beth hesitates. “No. I never…” She draws a breath. “I never had a drink before at all.” 

Lori blinks at her. This is unexpected. She's not sure how she feels about it. Though it's also true that she's not sure how she feels about anything. “How come?” 

“My daddy. He says he used to drink too much. Says he got… bad, when he did. Got thrown in the drunk tank, did some other stuff. He won't let any in the house.” 

And she hasn't had any _outside_ the house, despite the fact that she must have had opportunities. What a good girl. Lori finds herself marveling. Better girl than she ever was. “Well.” She glances down at the glass she's proffering. “I mean it, Beth, you really don't have-” 

Beth plucks the glass out of her hand, her smile both growing more uncertain and widening. “Gimme.” 

Finally Lori can smile too. 

She settles herself on the sofa beside the loveseat, kicks off her shoes and folds her own legs half under her, the glass cool and slick in her hand. Beth looks up at her and Lori lifts her glass. Wordless toast; she's not sure what to say. After a few seconds, Beth does the same. 

In unison, they drink. Lori gulps. Beth sips, cautiously - and then a lot less so, the muscles of her throat working as she swallows, tongue swiping across her lips. “It's… it's good.” 

“You also don't have to just say that.” 

“I'm not just sayin’ it. It's good.” 

Lori sighs and pushes her hair back, leans her elbow on the armrest and props her cheek on her hand. The wine is sliding easily down her throat, sour-sweet on her tongue, very faintly sharp. Pleasant. If she can work up a buzz…. She reaches down beside her and produces the bag of chocolate, tears it open, holds it out. Another brief hesitation; then Beth works her fingers into the bag and snags one, sets her glass down on the table beside her and tears at the foil wrapper with her thumbnail. 

Her fingers are so slender. Short nails filed perfectly smooth. Yet there's the same strength in them that's in her legs, subtle but undoubtable. Lori notes a couple of tiny pale scars on the knuckles of the middle and ring finger on her left hand. Then the mild crookedness of her white front teeth as she bites the chocolate in half.  Chews, examining the remaining piece with brow furrowed. 

“Are you alright, Lori?” 

The question takes her by surprise. She inhales, blinks again; Beth is no longer chewing and the other half of the bar is nowhere to be seen, the wine glass returned to her hand. A couple of minutes must have passed and she missed them. 

She shifts, pulls her legs up tighter. What the hell. “Not really.” 

“It's your husband. Isn't it?” Gentle. Soft. No trace of judgment, and also no trace of pity. But yes, of course she knows, and now that they've gone this far, there's no point in denying it. 

“Yeah.” Another, smaller swallow of wine. Another sigh. “We've… we’re havin’ problems.” She closes her eyes and runs her fingertip around the rim of the glass. “He's not living here right now.” 

“I figured.” Pause. When she speaks again, she sounds nervous, but there's a layer of determination over it, as if she decided that this is something she should dig up the courage to do. “Do you wanna talk about it?” 

_No._ Hell no. She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to think about it. She wants to sit here and drink wine and eat chocolate like a big damn cliché and for some reason she wants to do those things in Beth’s company, and she doesn't want to think about that either. But here she is, opening her mouth and talking. 

“We were just fighting a lot. It wasn't one thing. Seemed like it was everything.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “And we _weren't_ fighting. That's the other thing.” 

“What d’you mean?” 

She doesn't wait a single beat. “He runs away. Not, like… literally.” Thin smile. “At least not most of the time. But he shuts down. He closes himself off. He’ll fight, but he won't talk about whatever’s really wrong. He won't…” Open eyes. Looking directly into Beth’s, that crystalline blue, and a shiver runs down her spine. This hurts, talking like this, and yet it feels like she's finally able to stretch a limb that's been hideously cramped for weeks. “He won't fight _for us.”_

Beth is quiet for a few moments, her gaze dropping. Lori lets the silence stretch out; it's not exactly comfortable, but it doesn't feel like something she should break. She doesn't have anything else to say, not now. 

As it turns out, there are some things here that are actually very simple. 

At last Beth meets her eyes again. “So what’s really wrong?” 

“I don't know.” Lori gnaws her lip. “Yeah. I don't… I don't know.” 

“That's why you want him to fight.” 

Her smile reappears, tightens. It feels pained. “I'd rather he talk. But I'd take fighting. As long as it _went_ somewhere.” 

Another period of silence, longer this time. Beth stares down at her wine, takes a sip. Takes another. Licks a spot of melted chocolate off her forefinger. Somehow Lori’s glass is nearly empty and that warm buzz is creeping over and through her, and everything hurts a little less. Or it doesn't, but it's increasingly difficult to care; the weary abandon that seized her before is gripping her more tightly. 

She has a lot left to lose. But it's feeling more and more like she doesn't. 

“You know why my family moved here?” Beth is giving Lori her own pained smile - pained and sad, and something in Lori’s belly turns over. Somehow she already senses where this is going, even if she has no idea. Or shouldn't. “Like… Have you heard people talk about it?” 

Lori shakes her head. She hasn't. Which is actually fairly odd, if there's something to talk about.

“I used to live on a farm.” Beth stops a beat, jaw working. “There was a fire, and the whole house burned to the ground. Mama and my brother Shawn didn't make it out. It's just me and my daddy and my big sister now.” 

_Oh._ She stares at Beth, lips parted, her belly doing somersaults. So it's bad. It's very bad, and irrationally, she's angry at herself for not having known. As if she owed it to Beth somehow. As if she _should_ care about this, because she should, and not knowing about it already represents some kind of negligence on her part. 

“Oh… Honey. Oh God, I'm so sorry.” 

Beth shrugs, something philosophical in it. Though the pain is gathering around her like a cloud, palpable. Nearly visible, emanating from her pores. “Can't do anythin’ about it now. We gotta keep goin’. But Daddy… You remember how I said he doesn't drink anymore?” 

Lori nods.

“Well. After that happened, after the funeral, he went back to drinkin’. Not for a long time. He went out one night and he just… He didn't come home. At all. Turned out he went to a bar and got drunk and got in a fight, and the cops hauled him in. Maggie - my sister - she had to go get him out.” She falls silent again, gazing at Lori - and suddenly she drains her entire glass in one toss, and for a split second Lori thinks she might hurl it against the wall like a man getting trashed on rail shots in some shitty dive.

Then she's up and moving, sitting next to Lori, her body angled toward her. Leaning forward, expression earnest. Earnest, and a little fierce, and Lori can't take her eyes off her. “Thing is, even before that, he was doin’ the same thing. Or I think he was, the way you're describin’ it. He shut down. He wouldn't talk about it. Barely said a word to us - Maggie had to plan most of the funeral by herself, though I helped where I could. But after he got drunk like that, it was like… somethin’ broke open in him, and he started talkin’. No more drinkin’. It was still hard, but it was better. It's better now.” 

She reaches out and takes Lori’s free hand in hers, and her fingers are cool and still damp from the condensation, but her palm is so _warm_. “I think he saw what he could lose. He really _saw_ it, like he didn't before. He could lose everything he had left. That's what made him want to fight.” Leaning closer, she gives Lori’s hand a harder squeeze; it's as strong as it looks. Lori can see flecks of green in her eyes, can smell the wine on her breath - bittersweet. A spot of chocolate at the corner of her small, full lips. “The point is, we couldn't _make_ him do it. We couldn't make him do anythin’. He had to see for himself. He had to be the one to come to us, or there's no way he ever would have stayed.” 

If she had an hour to come up with an answer, Lori doubts she could. If she had a day. A week. But Beth saves her from having to provide one, closes the last of the distance between them and wraps her arms around her. Hugs her, body small and soft and as warm as her palm, chin pressed against her shoulder, the light floral scent of her shampoo filling Lori’s nose. Wine and flowers and warm skin. 

Rick has never in his life smelled this way. Felt this way. 

_Been_ this way. 

Slowly, dreamily, she sets down her glass and lifts her arms and circles them around Beth’s middle, and Beth might be small and soft, but as with the warmth of her hands, her frame is just as strong. Makes sense now. Farm girl. Chores. Riding a horse on a golden summer afternoon, her hair flying in the breeze. 

Beautiful. 

Beth pulls back enough to look at her, that lovely fierce earnestness lighting her eyes. “If he really wants to fight for you, if he really does, he will.” 

Sometimes important things happen slowly, and you have time to absorb them. You can perceive their progress. You can understand them, as much as is possible, and you can prepare yourself for the world as it'll be when the process is complete. And then there are the things that happen so fast that there's no perceptible transition phase at all; you blink and there they are, and the world has changed and there's no going back to the way it used to be. 

You lose your mind, and you never find it again.

Lori blinks, and then Beth’s mouth is soft and warm beneath hers, and Lori’s eyes are fluttering closed and she's releasing a breath as she slides one hand up and splays it over Beth’s shoulderblades, pressing in, pressing so close, tasting the traces of wine on her lips as she flicks out her tongue, licking up the chocolate at the corner of her mouth. 

Beth stiffens. Fuck. _Fuck._ Jesus Christ, she needs to break this up, pull back, what the hell is she _doing -_ she still has no answer to that, except she's sitting on her sofa with her son in his room upstairs, and she's kissing her seventeen-year-old babysitter, and there is no way, shape, or form in which this is acceptable. This is unacceptable. This is unforgivable. She's a failure in ways she never imagined. 

She's not breaking it up. She's not pulling back. And it's impossible but Beth is _loosening,_ her lips parting, her tongue curling to greet Lori’s when she nudges gently in.  

Inviting. 

That noise barrier on the highway, the car swerving violently to meet it head-on. Her hands are rising to cup Beth’s jaw, tilting her head just-so, licking into her mouth. Thrusting. _Aggressive,_ so fast and so hard it slams a groan out of her, and Beth echoes it, her arms flexing. Her tongue, the ridges of her teeth, and everything is so wet and so _soft,_ and maybe a mouth should be a mouth but this is nothing like kissing a man. Or it's nothing like kissing Rick. Rick is rarely rough with her - and in fact it might be nice if it had happened more often - but he can be demanding, and she's the one who yields. She accepts. Now she's surging forward and Beth is yielding, sighing when Lori sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, going willingly when Lori starts to press her down. Starts to lift her body over Beth’s smaller one. 

Starts to crawl on top of her. 

“Lori.” 

She freezes. Finally does pull back, gazes down at where Beth is practically lying under her, lips swollen and glistening and her eyes so wide, and her hair cascading across the light blue upholstery. She looks shocked. She looks _scared,_ and an impact like a punch hits Lori square beneath the ribs and she gasps. Starts to push herself up and back, starts to struggle for an apology that will never, ever be sufficient, because how _could_ she, how could she _do this,_ what the fuck is _wrong with her._

Beth whispers her name again, and combs her fingers into Lori’s hair and drags her down. 

She's starting to realize some things. They're coming to her, once more dreamlike, and she slowly internalizes them as she clumsily kisses her way down Beth’s cheek to her jaw: how she's trembling in every muscle, how her breath is coming rapid and shallow, how heat is searing through her veins - and straight into a pool between her legs, and she's canting her hips downward, seeking the pressure of Beth’s thigh. Seeking friction. She's never done it but she's not _ignorant;_ she knows enough about the mechanics of how one might go about this, and she's beginning to intuit the ways in which their bodies might fit together, familiar and unfamiliar, and she shudders and lets out a thick moan. Beth’s knee between her legs and then hers between Beth’s, and Beth’s hands find her hips and her fingers hook through Lori’s beltloops as she rolls up, grinding, muffling her whimper with another deep kiss. 

And somehow they've found a rhythm, panting against each other, and Beth hooks her other leg over Lori’s hips and Lori’s hand settles just beneath the hem of Beth’s shorts, gliding over that delightfully smooth skin. Close, all at once she's getting _close,_ everything coiling in her, senses Beth might be too, and the image crashes over her like a wave: sliding down Beth’s zipper and wriggling her hand beneath the waistband of Beth’s panties, working to a wet, hot slickness just as sweet as her mouth, and _shit,_ she's already gone this far, Beth wouldn't stop her- 

Creak from the upstairs hallway, and it's like they've been slapped apart. 

Lori jerks backward at the same instant that Beth scrambles away and up, braced against the opposite armrest and staring at her with her eyes enormous and her lips quivering. Even more swollen than before - so wonderful to suck on, maybe to _bite,_ and Lori wants to rip her own skin off. 

Sick. _Sick._

Listening. Listening so hard it feels like it should almost make a sound in itself. But there's nothing else. 

Might not even have been him. 

_Please, God, let it not have been him. Give me that much mercy._

She’s opening her mouth again. But once more, Beth saves her, and Lori feels the most miserable gratitude it might be possible to feel. “I'm gonna-” She turns herself, pushes - a little  unsteadily - to her feet. She's not looking at Lori. She doesn't seem to be looking at much of anything. 

Her hands are shaking. 

“I'm gonna get some water,” she murmurs, and before Lori can answer, she's walking away, walking toward the kitchen. Not glancing back. 

Those tiny shorts. The full curve of her ass inside them, the way her hips sway as she walks. Why the fuck is she _noticing_ these things. She's never looked at a woman this way in her life. Never looked at _anyone_ this way. Like she's hungry. Like it would be fun to devour them. 

Somehow she finds her own feet, and then somehow she makes it up the stairs.

~

Carl’s bedroom door is closed, and though it's still relatively early, no light shows beneath it. Probably asleep, though she's not going to check and tempt fate. And the truth is that she doesn't want to know. If he's awake, she's not sure she can face that. _Did you hear something? Like what, Mom?_

_Like me making out with the teenage babysitter, something like that._

She stumbles into the bathroom and shuts the door as quietly as she can, falls backward against it and covers her face with her horrible, traitorous hands and sinks slowly to the cool, clean tile floor. 

At some point she hears movement downstairs, the _scree_ of the screen door’s hinges. Nothing, and then the engine of a car starting up, humming away. Beth, decided that she's sobered up enough to drive, getting out of dodge. Making her escape. 

Never coming back. No way. Barring some kind of ludicrous accident, she's never seeing that girl again. 

_Good._

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lori can't undo what she's done. She can't pretend she's not capable of it. So she can either do whatever it takes to make sure it never happens again... or she can do the exact opposite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a terribly long chapter; this is actually the second part of what _was_ a single long chapter. I'm planning to work on Howl and Got a Taste for the Cherry next, but I don't expect this will lie dormant for long. Especially not since I basically know exactly what I want to happen in the next chapter  >_>
> 
> ❤️

And once again - naturally - she can't sleep.

In fact, it probably _is_ hot enough for the AC, but she didn't turn it on before collapsing into bed, and she's not getting up to turn it on now. She scrubbed off the makeup, viciously yanked off her clothes, showered. Wrapped herself in a towel and retreated into the bedroom. Didn't bother with pajamas. She simply fell naked onto the bed, flopped onto her side, half buried her face in the pillow. _Xanax._ But she's not getting up for that either. And anyway, that feels like cheating. That feels like her own entirely unfair escape. She needs to be inside herself, fully aware, and deal with what she's done. 

So this is who she really is. This is what she's really capable of. Thought she was this wholesome housewife mom, a flat, pleasant cliché, and even her marital problems are clichés, nothing dramatic. Humdrum. Distance. She's miserable but her misery is as flat as she is. Or thought she was. It should be a neat kind of misery to fit into her neat little world. 

Instead she's a wreck. She's a wretched mess. She's shit at those things she was supposed to be doing, and now there's this _monster_ that was lurking inside of her this entire time, this predator waiting to come out and seize its unsuspecting, innocent prey. 

And to think, she’s actually congratulated herself now and then for not having an affair. 

Ogling the teenage babysitter - those tiny shorts, those legs, that ass. Kissing her. Getting her drunk before that - okay, one glass of wine ordinarily shouldn't be enough to do that, but this girl has never had a drink in her life. Getting her drunk, _taking advantage_ of her. Sucking her tongue and her lips, shoving her down onto the sofa and _rubbing against her_ like that, rubbing so hard and so fast she almost-

She's not even remotely surprised to discover that her hand is between her legs, fingers nosing her already sopping lips apart. 

And really? So fucking what? If she's never going to see Beth again, if she knows now what she truly is, it's not as though this even makes a difference. Not as though it can do her any good to lie to herself. 

She scoops up that wetness with her fingers and transfers it to her pounding clit, circles. 

She could have come against Beth’s thigh. Was close to it, and didn't, and that frustrated need is still thrumming in her core. Flowing outward now, flowing out of her, thick and hot. She draws her legs up and lets them fall open, arches her back and moans softly as the fingers of her other hand stroke across her nipples and tighten them into hard little pebbles. She hasn't breastfed in over a month, but they're still so goddamn sensitive in that way she's found unique to the activity, and they send another wave of heat south, throbbing in the lips of her pussy. 

Pussy. Beth’s pussy trapped in denim and straining against Lori’s knee. Could have gotten her hand on it, palmed her crotch through her shorts. Rubbed her that way too - _rubbed her the right way,_ isn't that funny. Things she noticed without noticing, Beth’s small tits under her loose tank top, what it would be like to get her hands on those too. Her own nipples, the way she's teasing them, the way she's teasing her clit - Beth’s fingers, Beth lying along her side and playing with her pussy, grinding her own against Lori’s hip all slick and slippery. Easing a finger into her and pumping slowly in and out, lowering those small, full lips to her tit and licking at her nipple, flicking it with that delightful little tongue. Sucking gently and then maybe not so gently, the smell of wine and shampoo and beautiful girl and _pussy,_ sticky fingers manipulating her clit in a way a man’s never could and urging her higher and higher. 

It's so good. It feels so good. 

It _would be_ so good.

_Beth._ She might or might not be saying it aloud, groaning it into the dark. _Oh Beth… Oh, honey, yes, that's perfect, just like that, do it just like that, you good girl…_

Lips moving against her nipple, voice tight and strained. _Come with me, Lori, I'm gonna come, I’m gonna-_

She whips her head to the side and clamps her jaws shut on the pillow, frantically muffling her sharp cry as her whole body arches up and falls, rises in a series of waves that go on and on - and even when it subsides it hits her all over again, the sense memory of that sweet body pliant under hers and willing to do what she wanted, even _eager,_ and as she flips herself over and draws her knees up under her, she gropes for the pillow and stuffs it between her legs. 

Beth’s strong thigh, moving as she moved. As she _humped_ it like a dog, like she's doing now, squeezing it between her knees and rolling herself against it like she's riding it, her head thrown back and her mouth wide in a silent yell.

She could have used that lovely girl on herself until she came in her own fucking jeans. Until she came as hard as she's coming now, _again,_ keening through her teeth, her spine twisting and bending and her tits bouncing on her heaving chest. 

Until she's still, except for her gasping, her skin gleaming with sweat. Except for when she sags forward, the pillow bunched up under her, dropping onto her elbows with her head hanging between her shoulders. 

She's not going to cry. She's not going to do that.

She's sure as shit not going to sleep, either. 

~ 

In some ways, the worst thing about the week after is how _normal_ it is. 

More than normal. Bland. Boring. Carl is off to camp next Monday, and the days leading up to it are characterized by the kind of aimless activity that comes along with waiting for the real thing to happen. He rides his bike. Goes over to friends’ houses for video games and for at least one barbecue. Helps out with chores, with Judith, doesn't fight with her and doesn't get an attitude. But he's pulling away; it started the night she and Rick took him out to dinner, and it only intensifies. 

He's looking forward to leaving. She doesn't blame him. It's possible that she's looking forward to it as well. And not for the reasons parents usually have for happy anticipation of their kids being out of the house. 

She's having a hard time looking him in the eyes.

On Wednesday evening, sitting on the back porch swing with Judith in her lap and watching the fireflies drift out of the grass and into the trees, she’s hit by an urge she doesn't bother trying to resist and pulls out her phone. Scrolls through her contacts until she reaches a name. Taps _edit._

Taps _delete contact._

She drops the phone onto the swing beside her with a soft _clunk_ , leans her head back and closes her eyes. 

She can't make herself a better person. But there are things she can do to fake it. 

Rick doesn't meet her at the camp buses on Monday morning to say goodbye to Carl. She's not sure whether or not she appreciates that. It may not even matter; hugging him goodbye, watching him board the bus with Judith on her hip, surrounded by all these other smiling, waving, happy parents, it comes to her that she doesn't feel much of anything. Or she does, but she can't quite reach it. It can't quite touch her. She's among these people, but she's not one of them. Maybe she never was. 

Christ, if they only knew. 

~

At home, she settles Judith into her playpen in the living room, then stands for a moment, listening. Silent house except for the rattling as Judith chuckles and bats at a happy plastic duck dangling just within reach. This is how it's going to be for the next six weeks. Like Rick said. 

_Peace._

Because Rick is not coming home. She has no way of knowing that, but she does. 

She's about to head into the kitchen - for what, she doesn't have the remotest notion - when her phone buzzes. She pulls it out of her pocket, squints at the number. 

It's not in her contacts. Not anymore. But she would recognize it anywhere. 

_Don’t answer._ She clenches the phone in her fist and bites down on her lip, bites until she's wincing with the pain. Whatever's at the other end, she doesn't need it. She doesn't need it in her life. She needs it to _not_ be in her life. It won't help her at all with her project of pretending she isn't a completely terrible human being. It won't help anything. 

So. 

“Hello?” 

“ _Hi, Lori._ ” Pause. She detects a very slight quaver in Beth’s voice and doesn't think it's the line. “ _Um. How’re you doin’?_ ” 

“Fine.” She pulls in a breath. Her own voice might not be entirely free of quaver. “Carl just left for camp.” 

“ _Oh._ ” Impossible to read, that _oh._ Then: “ _I was thinkin’… I mean, you can say no if you don't need it, it's totally alright, but I was thinkin’, I got nothin’ to do right now except summer readin’, and if you're all by yourself still and you could use someone to, y’know, come over and help out with Judith or the house or anythin’…_ ”

Like what happened never happened. Only that's not it at all. It's nothing like that. What happened is saturating every word here, every single breath, and Lori can't breathe at all.

“ _I could do that,_ ” Beth finishes. _“I'd be happy to._ ”

“Like a summer job?” 

“ _What?_ ” Beth sounds flustered. “ _No, like… I wouldn't be chargin’ or anythin’, it's not like that._ ” 

“Tell you what.” Something is altering itself inside her. Inside her chest, her throat; her voice is smoothing out, no longer shaking even the smallest bit. What she's saying is easy. She is what she is. This is what it is. And Beth, she's utterly certain, is offering what she's offering. 

Whatever that ends up meaning.

“Why don't you come over tomorrow and we’ll talk about it?” 

“ _Alright. That sounds great._ ” Her smile is audible. Lori imagines the curve in those pretty lips, bright and happy. “ _Can I come by around one?_ ” 

“Perfect. I'll see you then, Beth.”

_Honey._

“ _Bye, Lori._ ” 

“Bye.” 

She looks down at the number for a few seconds after Beth hangs up. Then, moving with the same smoothness that pervaded her voice, she scrolls to _create new contact._

She can continue to torment herself over this, continue to wallow in her bland self-loathing and her flat misery, and do it in this house alone. Or she can say _fuck it_ to the whole thing, and if the opportunity for depravity presents itself, she can go ahead and be depraved. Anyway, she's already done that. She can't undo it. 

It's far too late to go back.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting for Beth's arrival, there's what Lori wants, and what's she's afraid to want. Then there's what actually ends up happening, and all the possibilities waiting on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, some character stuff did sneak in there for a bit, but it's true that I started writing this almost entirely because I wanted to make some filthy porn. 
> 
> ❤️

She's never worn the swimsuit before.

She bought it not too long before Rick left. She encountered it during a semi-intentional meander through Macy’s, spotted it hanging on the front of a rack announcing an early summer sale. It was one of those impulse buys that you're supposed to regret later, but she had been pleased with how relatively little weight she had put on while pregnant with Judith and with - therefore - how little she had to lose, and something about it reached out and snagged her attention. Next thing she knew, she was standing under unflattering lights in a somewhat-the-worse-for-wear changing room, hands on her hips, looking herself up and down in the smudgy full-length mirror, and thinking…

She actually doesn't remember what she was thinking. Whatever it was, it got her to a register and it got her credit card out of her wallet, and when she got home, it got the suit into her bottom dresser drawer, because by then she had come to her senses and she honestly never expected to wear it.

But she didn't return it. And, for a variety of reasons, making use of it as a treat for Rick never asserted itself as an option. It's simply _been there,_ stuffed under a pair of yoga pants and an old sports bra. Almost as if she was trying to hide it.

Hell, maybe she was.

Standing here now, wearing it and staring at herself in her own full-length mirror like some kind of deeply uncomfortable reprise, she's pretty sure she was. From him but maybe also from _herself,_ because it is not under any circumstances the kind of thing she usually wears, and the memory of it on her, how it made her look and what it did to her body…

It's a two-piece, which isn't so unusual in and of itself. She’s worn swimsuits that showed a lot of belly, a lot of leg, a lot of everything. But there's something different about this one. Not only that the legs are _extremely_ high-cut and the waistband is set almost as low, rendering it the closest thing to a string bikini bottom it can get without actually being one. Not only that the fabric over her ass is thin enough and gathered enough that it seems to be teasing a transformation into a full-on thong. Not only that the cups of the top simultaneously mold themselves to her tits and pull them in, lift them upward over her sternum. The pattern itself isn't really anything remarkable - your standard blue-green-purple tropical flower deal. It's decidedly skimpy, okay; that's not so weird or noteworthy, even if it's not really in keeping with her aesthetic, and she'd guess that everyone has made a spur-of-the-moment purchase along these lines at one point or another in their lives.

The flutter that runs up and down her ribs as she gazes at herself is about those things, sure, but they're hopelessly inadequate when it comes to accounting for the reasons behind the feeling. They're necessary but they're not sufficient. In fact, now that she's seeing it, she _does_ think she can make a fairly good guess about what prompted her to shell out for it.

It's sexy on her. It's fabulously, ineffably sexy. It accentuates every curve, smooths every line. The sensuous dip of her waist, swell of her hips, her thighs, the way her full tits are set high and proud on her chest, nipples so maddeningly near to being exposed, and seem to ache for someone’s hands. Of course she has visible stretch marks, subtle pale and faded purple lines across her belly and over her hips, and she supposes she might be expected to be sensitive about them, but the truth is that she doesn't care, because as far as she's concerned, they do nothing whatsoever to reduce the strange eroticism of this thing.

She doesn't look like she's trying too hard. She doesn't look like a middle-aged housewife groping for some nostalgically constructed lie of her girlhood. She doesn't look out of place.

She looks _hot_.

She places her hands on her hips and turns this way and that, examining those curves and lines from first this angle and then the next one, a bemused smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she does. It's just after noon and her bedroom is flooded with sunlight, windows once more wide open and a breeze drifting in between the gauzy curtains, and she's bathed in that light, her skin suffused with that same gentle warmth, the breeze toying with her hair and raising goosebumps on her arms despite the temperature.

The goosebumps have nothing to do with the temperature.

Beth will be here in less than an hour.

And here she is, Lori fucking Grimes, looking at herself as she models what is most definitely the sexiest piece of clothing she owns that isn't outright Victoria's Secret lingerie. Looking at herself and trying to come to terms with what's going on here, which is that she’s plunged into a deeper end than she knew existed, and now she's preparing for Beth Greene’s arrival by considering the various ways in which she might seduce her.

Questions she never in a million years imagined she might ever ask: _How in the hell are you supposed to seduce a woman?_ Does it work the same as a man? Would Beth want the same things a man would? Would she respond to visual stimulation like this at all? Would she like the same things? Does she even genuinely _like_ women? Or was that entire thing a bafflingly ludicrous heat-of-the-moment aberration, meaning every bit as little as that drunken anger-driven grope session with the girl in college?

Lori can't even answer these questions for herself.

Has Beth done this before? Or is she even less _experienced_ than Lori is?

She turns, goes to the foot of the bed and sinks down onto it, facing the mirror hanging on her closet door, her hands clasped between her knees. Her hair is soft, framing her face in glossy waves and flowing over her shoulders, but her face itself is tense and pinched. She looks worried.

The second Beth walks in - assuming she does - she's going to know. Lori is such utter shit at hiding anything.

She closes her eyes and clenches her fingers around each other. _Take it off. Take it off and put on something normal, something that makes_ sense, _that won't make you into even more of a monster. Forget you ever considered this. At least try. She's not coming back here to pick up where you let off. She's coming back here because she's a sweet girl and she wants to give you a second chance._

Then, from somewhere deep and hot, a voice that she knows is hers and yet barely sounds like her. A sultry, hungry growl.

_She wants to give you a second chance, all right._

No.

Seconds later she's on her feet and headed to the closet, rummaging through the back and pulling out a light purple beach wrap. To the dresser to mist herself with perfume - Christmas gift from Rick, something a good bit nicer than she would pick up at a standard department store, deep and pleasantly musky. Minimal makeup, but bet your ass she's wearing some, because you know what they say about pennies and pounds.

And then she's in the backyard unfolding a white plastic deck chair, draping the wrap over it, setting a sweating glass of lemonade down in the grass beside it. Sitting, picking up her phone, tapping out a text.

_Be in the back. Door’s open._

She pauses, gazing down at the screen, at the faintly cloudy smudge of her fingertip across the keys. One half of a clear print. Like the phone itself is a crime scene.

Buzz. _k :)_

She sets the phone down in the grass, leans back in the chair, slides on a pair of sunglasses. She's lying in wait. That's what this is. Crouching in the tall grass by the water hole and ready to pounce on the unsuspecting gazelle.

_You think she's really so unsuspecting?_

Maybe.

_Maybe not._

~

The branches whisper and sway overhead. The grass ripples. The sun inches the shadows over her bare skin. When she takes a sip of lemonade, the ice has melted and formed a watery layer on top of the sugar, flowing thin and cool down her throat. All these things mark the passage of time, and now that she's waiting, it's surprising how utterly calm she is.

Then, as if from a greater distance than it is, she hears the screen door in the front squeak open and ease closed, and her teeth capture her bottom lip and worry at it. She sucks it into her mouth, which naturally sends her mind wandering in a very specific direction, and her thighs squeeze, the bones of her knees almost painfully jammed together, that edge of pain mingling with the slight swell of pleasure. _Shit,_ she's already hot, and it's not just the sun.

 _Jesus, would you ease_ up _. For the last time, this probably isn't going anywhere._

Louder squeak of the back door, the creak of the porch floorboards. Lori turns her head - a relaxed and even lazy movement, an _oh, hey, it's you_ gesture - tips her sunglasses down and gives Beth a wave.

Beth waves back. It's a perceptibly uncertain wave, and even at a distance Lori can see that her expression is uncertain as well. Like she doesn't know what to expect. Like she doesn't know quite what to do with her body now that it's occupying this space. Her body, which is clothed in the same tiny cutoff shorts as before, a blue tank top whose hem rises just high enough to display flashes of her belly - tantalizing flashes, Lori realizes with a shiver, and she's buried under the thought of what it would be like to kiss that soft skin, drag her lips over it, nip at it, make the muscles beneath jump and quiver.

_Fucking hell._

Cowboy boots, too. Worn cowboy boots that look as if they've seen genuine wear. Somehow that's unbearably cute.

She's coming down the steps, her long legs carrying her with that same enticing combination of awkwardness and grace, walking across the grass toward Lori with her pale gold hair gleaming in the sun. Backpack over one shoulder - a smaller one clearly meant for everyday casual use instead of school. That, also, is somehow fantastically cute, and it's Lori’s belly that's quivering a bit as she pushes herself up and removes her sunglasses.

In time to see Beth’s gaze sliding over her. Unhurried, downright blatantly _entranced,_ neck to toes and back up, taking her in, with eyes that widen more with every inch. Minutely, but Lori catches it.

And that same sultry voice whispers _Gotcha._

Beth clears her throat, shifts from one leg to the other. “Hi, Lori.”

“Hi, Beth.” She moves her legs to one side, pats the open space by her knees. “Wanna sit down?”

“I- Oh. Sure.” But she hesitates for half a moment before lifting the bag off her shoulder and setting it down by the glass of lemonade, her teeth working briefly at her bottom lip before she lowers herself onto the chair, her knees drawn together and her elbows resting on the tops of her thighs as she leans forward. Tense, shooting Lori a glance. But Lori can detect no fear there. No real apprehension.

She's also all but answered one of her questions to her own satisfaction: No, Beth has never done this. Not _this_.

“It's good to see you.” The urge to reach out and lay a hand on Beth’s knee is threatening to overpower her, but she gamely fights it off. No. Not yet. She's apparently abandoned the remains of the horror she was feeling at herself and now she's calculating, thinking strategy. The crazy thing, the little item that's absolutely insane - aside from everything - is that she's never even done this with men. At least not to this degree. Never tried to get into their pants, or get them into hers.

Or tiny shorts. Or tinier bikini bottoms.

“Yeah.” Beth clears her throat, shoots her another glance. “How you been doin’?”

 _Honey, I have no idea where the hell to start._ She shrugs. “Fine. Got Carl off to camp alright, so we’ll get a break from each other for a few weeks.”

Beth’s eyes widen still more. “So he's gonna be gone that long?”

So she didn't assume. _Camp_ could mean any number of things. “Yeah.” Lori reaches down for the glass. Slow swallow of lemonade. A drop of condensation collects on her chin, trickles down her throat to the hollow between her collarbones. “Between you and me, I'm more than okay with that. But I guess it's not too hard to believe. Won't be too long before he's a teenager, and he's already showing some of the traits.”

It's amazing how smoothly she's speaking. Absent, even airy. Like they're making the most innocuous conversation possible. Meanwhile goosebumps are rippling over her skin and heat is pooling in her cunt as she looks Beth over, unsurruptitiously as she can.

Christ, those _legs_.

Beth releases a breath, meets her gaze more squarely. Her eyes are the deepest, clearest blue-green, a close match to one of the shades streaked across the bikini’s fabric. “You think you'd need me, then? I mean, if it's just you and Judith all summer, seems like-”

“Oh, I could use you.” She smiles, toying with the glass. “She's not a huge handful, but her, plus the house, shopping, and I've got the garden…” Her smile falters, and that much isn't calculated. “And it doesn't look like Rick is coming home anytime soon.”

Beth gnaws at her thumbnail, nods. “Alright.” Pause. Then, “I'm sorry.”

Lori waves a hand. It's so much easier than it was to be dismissive. She thinks about Rick now, sitting here with this girl, and she feels none of the previous awful crawling in the pit of her stomach. None of the guilt. That probably says nothing good about her, but _oh fucking well._ “It’s okay. I'm doing okay. It'd be nice to have the help. And I'll pay.”

“I don't want you to pay me. I'm happy to just… do it.” Earnest. Earnest as she was that night, and Lori feels a welling of something behind her breastbone that she can't identify as lust at all. God, this is such an impossibly sweet girl - and isn't that how it started, anyway? Wasn't it simply about sitting with her, drinking wine with her, talking with her? Hearing something that Paula never gave her, for all her sympathy and patient ears?

So sweet and so kind. And even if she was kissing Lori back every bit as hard, grinding against her thigh with every bit as much heated desperation… she looks so innocent now.

That's probably part of why Lori does what she does. Monstrous, after all - except maybe not.

Maybe she saw that sweetness, and merely wanted to extend a hand to touch it.

“That's real nice of you, Beth,” she murmurs, and sits up further. Closer. Close enough to catch a whiff of whatever fragrance Beth put on before coming over here - fresh and floral without being overpowering - and while she has no way of knowing, she's certain that Beth used it for the same reason she did: with the thought that someone else might be in this kind of proximity to her. Near enough to enjoy it. And sure enough, she catches it as Beth’s nostrils flare.

Beth is nervous. It's in every muscle fiber wound tight, every stiffened joint. The set of her jaw, the unnatural speed of her breathing. Lori can actually see the pulse fluttering in her throat.

She doesn't think. Doesn't second-guess. She reaches up and gently cups Beth’s jaw and tilts her head back to expose that delicate flutter, and lays her lips over it.

If anything, Beth stiffens even more. Stiff - and skin burning under her hand and her mouth, blasting heat in a way Lori somehow didn't feel before. Practically thrumming, like her blood is drumming through her, and her breath catches and then seconds later releases into a heavy sigh as Lori flicks out her tongue.

Hand on her. Soft little hand on her bare shoulder, holding onto her. Her head tipping back even further, and Lori’s name whispered into the sleepy air.

She can't do this. Or at least she can't do it without at least one last ditch attempt to not be a horrible person. She pulls back, releases Beth’s face, and Beth returns her gaze to Lori’s, her cheeks and ears a brilliant crimson and her lips parted and wet.

“Beth.” _I need you to stop me. Apparently I can't stop myself._ “You don’t… You don't have to do anything, this isn't-”

“I wanna,” Beth breathes, and - insanely, _surreally_ \- she's tugging at Lori’s shoulder, slipping under thick dark hair and curling her hand around the nape of Lori’s neck. Smiling. Shy, but.

So then she's a lot less gentle.

She hauls Beth back in, this time taking her by the ponytail and pulling her head back, her pretty face turned up toward a sky as clear as her eyes, and when she returns her lips to Beth’s throat, she makes a seal of them and sucks. Bites. Lightly, not least because seconds into doing it she realizes that if she puts a visible mark on this girl, that might make for trouble later, but hard enough to get a gasp out of her, a twitch of her legs. Lori’s eyes flick open and she catches a glimpse of them as they part, and she slips a hand between Beth’s thighs and parts them further, does what she thought about doing in the seconds before that upstairs noise hurled them apart and presses her hand over the denim that covers what she really wants.

Another gasp, sharper, and she's ready for a panicked _wait no stop I didn't mean that_ but it never comes. Instead there's that soft little hand on her wrist, holding her in place, _encouraging,_ and her own breath is crashing in and out of her lungs like waves under the control of an unusually aggressive moan.

She can't actually feel anything through the rough fabric. But the heat, and knowing what's there, and the faint moan that vibrates through Beth’s frame as Lori glides her lips upward, teeth scraping as she goes.

Jesus, she's never been more grateful that the privacy fence is high and none of the neighbors have a direct line of sight to the backyard. Still, this is so risky, this is so fucking _dangerous,_ and it only speeds up what's already hurtling through her, something searing and dark that seems to know what to do with her mouth and hands far better than she does.

Beth is turning, angling her body more fully toward Lori’s, and heady inspiration strikes; Lori drops her hands and hooks her fingers through Beth’s beltloops, uses them to guide her up and over and down into her lap to straddle her. Beth’s expression is mildly surprised as she settles - and then something else entirely as Lori frames her face and draws her back down, tonguing her lips apart and licking into her.

She's sweet. Something sugary, eaten recently. It makes Lori greedy, makes her lick harder, makes her suck Beth’s tongue into her own mouth as she runs her hands down and up Beth’s sides - over the tank top and then beneath the hem, all that wonderfully silky skin. Revealing the belly she wanted to kiss. _Will_ kiss.

 _Shit_.

But she's reached the tight band of Beth’s bra - no underwire, of course she wouldn't need one - when Beth stiffens again, curls backward, and Lori stops, peering up at her with sudden apprehension. Her head is lowered, face shadowed by loose hair, her mouth a thin line.

Lord, she's done it after all. Screwed up. Again.

Her hands have frozen, but she hasn't withdrawn them, and Beth also isn't shoving them away or shaking them off. She's simply hunched, not meeting Lori’s eyes.

“Beth? What is it? What's-”

“I'm… I'm really small,” Beth mumbles. Not quite a stutter. Her face is burning again, but Lori is abruptly sure that it's not her previous adorable shyness, and it's not arousal, and she gets it. “And you're…” She gestures at Lori’s chest, still not looking up, and all at once Lori feels basically like shit. Because she's never hugely _blessed_ in that area either, but the top is accentuating them, making them appear even fuller than they are, and it never occurred to her that it would have this effect.

And maybe it should have.

“Oh, sweetie. No.” She shakes her head, something dense working its way up between her collarbones. This will not in a million years stand. “No, you're beautiful. Let me see. C’mon.”

Hungry as before. Ravenous - those pretty little tits hiding beneath all that cloth. But that density is also there, nearly aching, and she doesn't know what to do with it.

Beth releases a long breath. Reaches down and takes the hem of her shirt. Lori covers her hands but doesn't slow her down or speed her up as, with obvious reluctance, she pulls it over her head.

Plain white cotton, slightly worn. Of course; she wouldn't wear anything else, and Lori is absolutely certain that her panties are the same. But just now she's not thinking about that. All her focus is locked on the small, tempting handfuls the bra contains.

She licks her lips. “Can I-?” And then with sudden determination Beth is reaching back, unhooking the bra and letting it fall into the grass, and there they are in all their glory, flushed pink nipples peaked as the breeze caresses them. The breeze, followed by her thumbs as she cups her palms dreamily over them, squeezes so carefully, circles and strokes them and Beth arches and bites back a low whine.

None of this makes any fucking sense, and yet it's happening.

“Lori.” She swallows, her hands tight on Lori’s upper arms, once more merely holding on as if the breeze might carry her away. “Oh, that's…”

“That's good, honey?” It comes out in a goddamn _purr,_ rough and delighted.

She nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I wanna… _mmm…_ I wanna touch you too, please…”

“Go ahead.” She curves her back, lifting them closer to Beth’s hands - offering them - and Beth touches her, first nothing more than hesitant fingertips over the outer curves and then more eagerly, cupping, squeezing, and Lori moans as lightning scatters down her spine.

“Touch ‘em like I'm touching you, sweetheart.” Her teasing fingers tease a bit more roughly, taking those cute nubs between her thumbs and forefingers and giving them the lightest pinch. “Go on. Yeah, that's-” She breaks off as Beth tugs the top edges of the bikini cups down and folds them under, and her tits are bare in the sun, Beth gazing at them as if they're something extraordinary.

She doesn't know when Rick last looked at her that way.

“You're so pretty,” she whispers. Her hands are creeping back upward, fingers tracing around Lori’s nipples and then ghosting across, and Lori tenses and can't keep back a whimper. Their increased sensitivity hasn't yet completely disappeared, and her hips are rocking, canting upward as her pussy throbs. Christ, she needs _pressure,_ any kind of pressure at all, and yet she's still rapt at this, at the image of her and this lovely girl playing with each other right out on the goddamn open on a summer afternoon.

With hectic absurdity, it occurs to her that she could probably have anything she wants at this point.

“Suck them.” Breathy moan, half disbelieving, but she's positive she's not finished doing and saying things she can scarcely believe. “Suck on them, Beth, please, oh- _Oh_.”

Beth’s swollen lips closing over her left nipple as her fingers keep working the right, careful suction and a bold swirl of her tongue, and she clutches Beth’s tits and lets her head fall back and groans. Her clit feels the size of a fucking _cock,_ she’s just about certain that she's soaked through the crotch of her bikini bottom, and Beth’s mouth is so warm and wet on her, her dancing tongue, and her moans are ragged and helpless as Beth switches to the other nipple and sucks more firmly.

Smiling against her.

Without noticing it, she's shifted in the chair - they both have, and Beth is no longer straddling both her legs. She's half kneeling, knee bent and pressed against Lori’s aching pussy, her own set against the top of Lori’s thigh above her knee, and whether it was instinct or conscious intent doesn't matter. There's that friction, finally, and Lori sobs with relief, rolling her hips up and down as Beth matches the movements of her lower body while muffled _mm-mm_ s hum out of her into an uneven rhythm.

They are picking up where they left off, grinding against each other, her fingers gliding rapidly back and forth over Beth’s perfect little nipples, Beth’s mouth heating one of hers while the spit coating the other cools it in the air. She thought they might get inside at this point, be out of even the most improbable view, but no fucking way is she moving now, not with her cunt pulsing pleasure and Beth Greene riding her, and it’s so clumsy and she doesn't give a shit, because it feels so _amazing._

“That’s it.” Echoes of what whirled through her mind as she furiously got herself off in her bed, the words, the body alongside hers. “Honey, that's… oh, God, just like that, that's so good, _shit-_ I'm gonna- I'm gonna come, Beth, you're gonna make me come, you _good girl-_ ”

But Beth gets there first, nipple popping free of her mouth as she jerks backward and tosses her head, her features screwed up into a silent yell. Like the rest of this, it's fast and awkward, her knee jammed between Lori’s legs, Lori clasping her by the waist and staring up at her in open awe - until her own orgasm surges through her and grips her with long, violent shudders, a cry trapped behind her bared teeth.

Then warm sun, broken by the leaves overhead. Panting, a heaving body sagging against hers and smooth, damp skin under her hands. Hot breath at the base of her throat and the mingling scents of shampoo and sweat in her nose. A blur of blond hair.

 _Beth_.

 _This is it,_ she thinks, her head fuzzy like a wine-buzz. Even if there might have been any going back before, there isn't now. She can't undo this. She can't _unfeel_ it. She can't erase the taste of Beth’s mouth or the sweet smell of her skin, the sound of her moans, the way her tits fit so flawlessly into Lori’s palms. She can't pretend she didn't mean to do precisely this, or that she didn't love every twisted second of it.

She can't ignore the full knowledge that they’ve hardly even done anything. That this isn't half as twisted as they could get. If they wanted to. _Fuck,_ it's so wrong - and now she can admit that the wrongness is part of why she wants it so bad.

This is who she is.

She wants to as much as she can remember wanting anything. Tangled up with Beth, she just came, just made her come, and far from being sated, all she’s thinking about is when she’ll get to do it again.

Girl is right here, limp in the cradle of her body. And the day is barely half over.

She raises her hand and brushes Beth’s hair away from her face, gathers it along with her ponytail. Smooths it, stroking her. Petting her. Beth’s breath is slowing, easing with the rest of her body, and when Lori kisses the crown of her head, she hums and stirs. Nuzzles her jaw.

 _Oh_.

“Sweetheart.” Her lips brush the outer shell of Beth’s ear, and a little shiver dances through Beth’s body and into Lori’s as she huffs a laugh. And it hits Lori then, with all the gentle force of Beth’s fingers: it's not just about coming. It's not just about making her come.

It's about this. Simply this. And she might have this all damn summer.

“Let’s go inside.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clearly past the point of no return, Beth and Lori go even further. And yet Lori is keenly aware that they still haven't gone nearly as far as they might.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit shorter than the previous chapter but I hope you will find it just as sweet. ❤️ The next one should be a bit more substantial for various reasons.

As they stumble through the back door, with a sudden rush of anxiety she's listening for the sound of Judy fussing - as if that could break some kind of spell, just as sharp and total as the first sound that tore them away from each other. But it's silent in the house, silent except for Beth’s huffing exhale when Lori pushes her against the wall beside the pantry. Through the door she hears something clatter to the floor, maybe a mop, and then the world consists of Beth’s sweet, hot mouth as Lori thrusts her tongue past her lips, her hands once again finding Beth’s perfect little tits.

Silent except for their simultaneous moans, the faint wet smacking sound as their lips work against each other. God, she just came minutes ago and usually that means at least a short span of time where she doesn't want to do anything else - or it did, before she started getting herself off with downright pornographic images of this delightful girl seething through her mind.

Now she's hungry, once more shoving a knee between Beth’s legs, her own cunt a fucking inferno of need. What she got, it wasn't anywhere near enough. 

Nothing _inside_ her yet. And her whole body is ravenous. 

Beth’s shaking hands on her hips, her waist, groping at her tits and grazing over her nipples, and Lori arches and presses into her palms - freezes when Beth stiffens and sucks in a breath, because it sounds dangerously close to fear. Lori lowers her head, focuses, and Beth is staring at her with eyes every bit as wide as they were before. Not frightened… but maybe in the vicinity. Within view. 

“I've never done this.” Beth swallows. “With a- a woman. I never…” 

“Oh- Sweetie. Me neither.” Something like relief passing through her, because it's better, knowing that she's not the only one fumbling through this, lost in the midst of unfamiliar terrain. Except that's not all it is. That's not all that's washing into her veins. 

This girl is so innocent. So young. So _ripe._

Beth gasps again. Obviously surprised. “You… never?” 

It makes sense, that she might have expected otherwise. That she might have assumed this woman who’s so much older than her would know exactly what she's doing. It's sweet. It's also unsettling, and Lori shakes her head. “No. I never… Not like this.” _Not this bad. Not this wrong,_ and _liking_ how wrong it is. She ghosts her lips against the corner of Beth’s mouth, and Beth sighs, relaxes slightly. “I want to. I want to do it with you.” 

_Do it._ Do _what?_

Do everything. 

For a moment Beth doesn't respond, and all at once Lori’s worried again, that she’ll come to her senses and dart out from under Lori’s arm, get her ass out of here as fast as she possibly can, and do the smart thing by never coming within a hundred yards of Lori ever again. But then Beth catches her lower lip between her teeth, her palms framing the outer curves of Lori’s breasts, and nods. 

“Me too.” 

“Honey.” She moans - Christ, she can't stop making all this _noise._ Free to do so. No one to hear but an infant. Somehow she finds Beth’s hand and threads their fingers together, holds it like they're old friends and gives her a gentle tug away from the wall. “Come with me.” 

She nearly laughs at her own phrasing, and Beth _is_ breaking out in a mildly nervous giggle - nervous but excited, her huge blue eyes dancing, as Lori leads her through the kitchen toward the entry to the living room.

Except just as they step through it together - practically stumbling again, unable to keep any significant distance, trying with ridiculous determination to kiss and walk at the same time - she thinks about not leaving the kitchen at all. About how it's possible - it really is - to do what she wants on the floor, bend Beth over the counter, heft her onto it and brace herself up and lean in between her spread legs, lay her out on the table like a goddamn feast and tear her tiny shorts and panties off and just… 

_Eat her._

All these things she's only half-imagined, and now they might be hers for the taking. 

The living room is sun-drenched as the yard was, but the light is gentled by the white walls, the pale hues of the furniture, the honey-colored wood and the gauzy peach-toned curtains. She thinks about pulling the thicker ones, then abandons the idea when Beth drags her lips down her neck to her collarbone, laps at the hollow there and sends a wave of trembling all through her. There's the sofa, the place where she pushed Beth down beneath her and forced her way in, and she practically shoves Beth toward it, turning them when the backs of Beth’s knees come into jarring contact and dropping onto it, holding her in place between her legs with fingers hooked into her beltloops. Already pulling. 

“Take ‘em off for me, sweetheart.” 

She does. Or she tries. Her hands seem clueless, as if the brain guiding them isn't fully functional anymore. Which might well be true, Christ knows that's what _Lori_ is feeling, fingers tangling with Beth’s as she attempts to assist her. Somehow her zipper rasps down and the shorts follow, and then it's her in only her panties - soft white cotton, of course she wouldn't be wearing anything else - and a darkening wet spot visible below her mound. 

Rush of saliva. The fantasy of it, how it might taste. 

Beth is abruptly shy again, her hands twitching at her sides and her eyes downcast, cheeks and chest a fierce crimson, but she's clearly no less eager for all that, and once more Lori thinks about _innocence_ and _purity_ and she feels downright evil. With Beth not meeting her gaze it's even easier to look all she wants to, Beth’s slender form with her enticing nipples and full hips, strong thighs with skin that prickles when Lori runs her hands up them. 

Slides between them and applies some careful pressure, and Beth’s legs part enough to admit her. 

When she presses against that wet spot she gets a shudder and a whimper for her pains and she smiles, pressing harder, pressing where she knows Beth’s clit is throbbing for her, and moving in an achingly slow circle. The angle is awkward and crooks her wrist uncomfortably, but as with so many other things here, she doesn't care, her other hand splayed at the small of Beth’s back and urging her closer. Lips low on her sternum and scraping upward; it's good that she's short, because Lori doesn't have to stretch too far upward to reach her nipples, flicking at them with her tongue. Without meaning to she's angling her own hips down, humping at the couch and not getting anywhere near what she wants, but Beth’s breath is stuttering, her own hips tilting to push harder into what Lori is giving her, and all she can hear are moans. 

It's still not _enough._

Her mind makes itself up, sudden and very firm. She'll never be sure exactly where the idea came from but it arrives fully and insistently formed, and maybe it was simply a natural extension of what they did in the back yard - but it doesn't matter. What matters is what's happening now, how she's gripping Beth’s soft cotton panties under the hem and yanking them down her thighs, and as Beth trips out of them, hopping adorably on one foot and breaking into an equally adorable giggle, Lori pulls back and shrugs off the top, thrusts her hips into the air to get the bikini bottom to follow. She wriggles, kicks it away - and sees how Beth is looking at her, staring in exactly the way she did when she saw Lori’s bare tits, like she's completely forgotten herself in favor of the most amazing thing she's ever seen. 

Lori never would have believed it, that a girl could look at another woman’s pussy like that. And yet here they are, and her eyes slide from Beth’s to the thatch of blond curls between her legs, the way they glisten down where they meet her plump vulva. 

She does something she's never done in her life, not even with Rick. She leans back against the cushions, opens her legs and sets her fore and middle fingers into a V to push her pussy lips apart, the air cool on her damp skin. 

She's showing herself off. Brazen. Like what's there is _worth_ showing off. 

"You want this, sweetheart?"

Beth’s eyes widen as much as Lori has ever seen them and a choked noise works its way out of her throat. Lori thinks she might be about to drop to her knees, and oh my _God,_ that would be so nice, but it's not in keeping with her plans at the moment. Maybe later. 

No, for _absolutely sure_ later. 

She releases her pussy and grasps Beth by the hips, tugs her down as she lays another lingering kiss at the apex of her ribcage. “C’mere, honey.” 

Beth goes, pliant, seeming stunned. Letting Lori pull her onto the couch, allowing herself to be turned as Lori turns, so she's lying half on her side, pushed up on one elbow to watch in silence with her lips parted and slightly moving. Lori thinks about praying as she works her legs alongside Beth’s, bending them with a hand on Beth’s knee to lift her over; she thinks about sin, about how if there's a Hell she's probably going straight there after this, and how it's worth it, it's _so fucking worth it_ when her body finally arranges itself how she wants it and her pussy is nudging Beth’s, sparks scattering from the pulsing ball of lightning that is the webwork of nerves knitted through her clit. It's so good, and Beth’s head falls loosely back as she lets out a helpless groan. 

“Like this. You see?” She rolls herself, rubbing her pussy forward and back, and Beth whines, nods, gropes for her and follows her lead as she moves again. “You've got it, sweetie, oh, that's so good…”

For sure, it's clumsy. The rhythm is uneven, jittery and strained as her muscles are, and she might be twisting something in her shoulder. But she keeps going, sighing Beth’s name and calling her _sweetie_ and _honey_ and _good girl,_ grinding their cunts together as she leans up enough to tweak Beth’s swollen little nipples. It's not even merely their cunts; it's indiscriminate, anywhere she can locate pressure, lips and clit and her mound, her inner thighs, slick and sticky all over her gloriously smooth skin. Thinking in a chaotic whirl about how it would be if there was no hair between them, if it was all shaved smooth, something she's never even considered but all that _skin._ That wet pussy smearing cream, mixing with her own; a roar of heat in her veins and she arches, her teeth bared and every muscle tight. 

“Lori, please…” 

“You gonna come?” Panting, ragged. God, she loves talking like this. “Yeah, you come, you sweet girl, gimme your pussy, you come all over me, oh Jesus, oh, JesusJesus _Christ-_ ” 

She doesn't wait this time. Doesn't even try. Lets it all go and shakes off everything but the little body searing against hers and shuddering between her legs, the wet smack as she bucks them together and  a wail tears out of her. Beth too, quieter but somehow even harsher, blunt nails raking over her skin and her tit jamming into Lori’s palm, nipple fitting like a pebble into the crease. She falls back, they both do, but they're still moving, weak and frantic. Can't let go. Just a few more seconds of this, this pleasure that slams itself over and over into her brain. 

As if she can't have it again. And by now she's completely certain she can. 

She can have it as many times as they want. 

Everything blurs away into warm, quiet sunlight. The room remains soaked in it and they're soaked along with it, and at last she's limp and supine, blinking at the featureless white ceiling and the brassy gleam off the curves of the light fixture as Beth’s fingers trail mindlessly across her upper thigh.

First out in the yard. Then right here on the couch, and even if it's technically more secluded, it still feels so deliciously shameless. It feels like the kind of thing people do when sex is new and when they're new to each other, and everything is so hot and anything seems both possible and utterly devoid of consequences. 

She supposes both of the former might be true. She's not thinking about the latter. 

One consequence, absurdly occurring to her: if this was anywhere near as messy as it felt, she's going to have to spot-clean the upholstery. Before she knows it's coming, laughter shivers through her chest, partially muffled by her hand. 

Beth offered to _help out._ Maybe she could have Beth do it, then, do it naked, bent over to scrub the damning evidence of what they've been doing with her round ass in the air and just about begging for Lori’s attention. 

At the edge of her vision she sees a blond, tousled head lift upward, hears a vague croak of a voice. “What?” 

“Nothing.” She shakes her head, her lips curving into what feels like a positively goofy grin. “It's just…” 

She shrugs without raising herself, gives Beth’s knee a squeeze. It's not nothing. She can't possibly explain it in a way that makes an ounce of sense but it's sure as hell not nothing. 

Now they both get to find out what it is.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having dived deep into each other, Lori and Beth steal a little more time to do a little more swimming. And Lori is beginning to truly believe that there might be a lot more time to steal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since the last update; the fact of the matter is that I'm simply not writing anything as fast as I used to. But I intend to keep this going. ❤️

A rainbow is dancing across the ceiiing.

Lori doesn't know where it's coming from. Some refracted reflection from somewhere, something met in just the right way by the light and split off into something new. Refined. And she might be new to this whole _screwing women_ thing, but she's not an idiot and she's not oblivious to the cultural significance of rainbows, and she chuckles softly at it. Wryly.

She still has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Beth breaths a questioning _mm?_ and lifts her head slightly, though she doesn't turn enough to meet Lori’s eyes. At some point - God knows how long they've been lying here but it was long enough for the sun to shift and that ironic little fragment of light to come into being - the two of them shifted on the sofa, and Lori is stretched out on her back, Beth reclining between her spread legs with her head pillowed on Lori’s tits. As for Beth’s tits, Lori is playing idly with them, circling her nipples with lazy fingertips. Everything is still too quiet and too subdued for it to be going much of anywhere, and in fact Lori knows better than to expect that they'll do anything else today if ever again, but Beth has done absolutely nothing to disentangle herself, and without entirely meaning to Lori has been tracking the length and tightness of her breaths - the one very gradually shortening and the other increasing just as slow.

Working her back up into a simmer. If Beth turns out to want that, she's extremely happy to oblige.

But that question. She angles her chin enough to press a kiss to Beth’s temple. “Nothing.”

“That's the second time you said that.” Beth skims her hands down the tops of Lori’s thighs, exploratory, and Lori shivers. She's doing her own simmering, the lingering ripples of her last climax fluttering in her pussy. “You sure it's nothin’?”

Not worried. If anything Beth sounds mildly amused. But still.

Lori sighs, her focus returning to the ceiling. “It's just so strange.”

A small laugh. “Yeah, I guess that's one word for it.” The laugh sinks into meditative silence, and she keeps stroking Lori’s skin, her movements meditative as well. Like fingers working over prayer beads, devoting particular time and attention to each centimeter.

Lori knows Rick has touched her like that. She just can't recall the last time he did.

“What I… What we did.” Beth swallows. “What I did to you.”

Now faint but genuine concern. “What about it?”

“Like you said. Strange.” She wiggles her body a bit, nestling into the bed Lori has made of herself. “I never wanted to before. I didn't think I was like this. And… Y’know.” Even more thoughtful now. “It's the kinda thing you're not supposed to do.”

Oh. More than concern; Beth doesn't sound upset, no trace of regret in her voice, but all the same Lori’s gut is twisting - and how did she think it would be? That having gone this far, Beth wouldn't want to check out before she gets in any deeper? That she would want to keep this perversity going?

Still stumbling along these lines. Like she can't believe, even when the material evidence is sprawled all over her.

But she has to ask. “Did you not… Are you sorry you did?”

“No,” Beth says immediately. A little wonderingly. “And I don't feel bad. Maybe it was bad, maybe it was wrong, but I… I don't feel that way.” She pauses, laughs again, and something flips over in Lori’s chest. _Such a sweet girl._ “Girls with… with other girls, in church they'd say that kinda thing was wrong, but people do it. Seems like it makes ‘em happy. I know a girl in one of my classes has a girlfriend. They keep it pretty quiet, but everyone knows… and it's not a big deal. At least it doesn't seem like anyone wants to make it one.”

So that's what she's thinking about. Lori is wordless, nonplussed, staring blankly at the ceiling and trying to process. Not that she's so much older - pretty much old enough to be this girl’s _mother,_ for God’s sake. Not that she's technically married. Instead… this. This one, relatively minor thing. Or, if not quite minor, not anywhere near the most appalling part of this as far as her estimation goes.

Maybe she needs to adjust. Maybe she needs to adjust a lot of things.

“We don't have to tell anyone,” she murmurs, and instantly feels a tiny flush of shame at what that sounds like… and a deeper, far more delicious flush of pleasure at the same thing. Yet another facet in this depraved little gem. “It can be just between us.”

“It _should_ be just between us.” A hint of solemnity creeps into Beth’s voice. “I don't want you gettin’ in trouble for it. And I want…” She trails off, and Lori practically hears the blush suffusing her cheeks, catches the pink of it at the tips of her ears. Feels the warmth spreading over her chest all the way to the hardening buds of her nipples. “I don't wanna stop.”

Silence, for a long time. After a moment or two Lori realizes that her fingers have ceased their teasing, that Beth’s have as well, come to rest right above her knees. So it's out there now, a statement that establishes as much as it conveys desire. A future statement, reaching forward - _here's how I want this to go._ Not very specific, but very, very clear.

Now, beyond a shadow of a doubt and purely logical: if she doesn't want to stop, she wants to keep going. And if she wants to keep going, she doesn't want to confine herself to what they've already done.

All her fantasies. The particular fantasy from before, that swept through her like a wind when Beth stood naked before her with her pussy barely inches away. What Lori might have done then, reached out and tugged her in and ducked her head, extended her tongue like a hummingbird sipping nectar.

“I don't wanna stop, either,” she breathes, hoarse. “Beth… Oh, sweetie, there's so much I wanna do.”

Explore, with someone every bit as wonderfully new to this as she is. What they might discover. What they might find.

Then, just as hoarse and shaking the smallest amount, just at the edges: “Me too.”

Abruptly she's aware - piercingly aware - that they've bubbled up into a lot more than a simmer. Beth’s breath is coming in quick pulls, hands moving again, and Lori doesn't think; her body seems to know what she needs to do as if it's merely been waiting for this, and while her left hand remains where it is, now lightly pinching and tweaking, her other is gliding down Beth’s ribs and belly, that marvelous expanse of baby-soft skin all covered in downy blond. She grins against the crown of Beth’s head as Beth gasps and shudders, shudders even harder when Lori combs through her bush and finds the swollen nub at the apex of her pussy lips.

“Lori… God, please…”

“Please what, honey?” That bizarrely confident version of her, a side she didn't know existed before now - almost masculine, or that's the only way she can think of it, an authority in total control of this scene. “You like that?” She can say it, _Christ,_ she can just keep talking. No more filters at all. Completely inappropriate. “You want me to make you come again?”

Beth gulps and doesn't hesitate, nods shakily, her legs parting wider. She's sticky down there, with coming before and with her fresh arousal, and Lori dips her fingers even lower and nudges her lips apart, glides through all that delightful slickness.

And maybe she wouldn't have had the courage before. But she does now, now that she's been expressly invited to treat this as a playground, and when she finds the entrance, she doesn't hesitate either before she pushes carefully into slippery heat.

Beth stiffens, hiccups, fumbles at her legs as she briefly closes them tight against Lori’s hand. But to the extent that it's voluntary at all, Lori recognizes it: holding her where she is, not trying to keep her out. Squeezing into extra pressure. Opening again, trembling as hard as her every muscle, and whispering _oh Lori oh yes oh oh_ with those ohs deepening into moans as Lori presses deeper and crooks her finger upward in a come-hither motion.

Smiling again. _Yes, come hither. Come hither, little one. Come on. Come._

But not like this. Her fantasy again, the one that's been tormenting her with wanting and never having - she _can_ have that. She can have it right now. She doesn't have to keep it locked inside her head, and she doesn't have to wait.

She can take her time.

Gently, she withdraws her finger and raises herself on her hands. “Move, baby. Sit up for me.”

Blinking at her, obviously confused, Beth sits clumsily up and half turns to her, mouth open - and Lori can't help it and sees absolutely no reason why she should. She lunges forward, seizes Beth by the shoulders and just about slaps their mouths together, her tongue thrusting into that heavenly preview of a pussy. This might be practice, she thinks with dim amusement, her teeth scraping over Beth’s plump lips, sucking so insistently - that taste that she can't identify as anything other than sex. She's never done what she's going to do, so she can use all the practice she can get, and as she devours Beth’s mouth she thinks _eating her out_ and almost laughs again.

That always seemed like a mildly ridiculous euphemism to her. Not anymore.

She doesn't break the kiss even as she maneuvers halfway into Beth’s lap and then begins to lower herself, sliding down between Beth’s knees, hands once more finding her little tits and kneading. She's being rough, if anything rougher than before, but to hell with it; she's so _hungry,_ hungry for this girl’s hot mouth and hot cunt and her whole hot fucking body.

She's been hungry for this for so long - with utterly no expectation of ever being satisfied. Now she's being presented with a feast.

The skin of her knees burns with the friction as she settles fully onto the rug, her hands shifting to the tops of Beth’s thighs and pressing them wider apart. The burn isn't unpleasant; if anything it hums up her legs and into her cunt, liquid and seething, but it exists only as background; all she can see is Beth’s flushed face, enormous eyes and her hair falling around her shoulders, her parted lips and the tongue flicking between them as if offering guidance. Beth’s chest is heaving, uneven, her fingers digging into the sofa cushions at her sides like she's afraid she might fly up to the ceiling.

Then all Lori can see, as a gauzy patch of sunlight falls across it, is Beth’s lovely pussy, right up close and personal, the delicate, damp patch of honey-blond curls and the dark lips it wreathes. The way it all shines with her juices, smeared into the creases of her inner thighs, and her swollen clit waiting there, exposed and defenseless to her. The scent of it, sharp and sweet both together. Tantalizing in a way she could never explain, tugging at an instinct in her that she didn't know was there.

She didn't know _any_ of this was there.

“Oh, baby,” she breathes. “Oh sweetie, look at you.”

Not even really talking to her. It's as involuntary as respiration, because she’s overwhelmed by the suddenly insistent truth that she's never been so close to a pussy before, not like this, leaning closer and closer as her hands travel down to Beth’s pussy lips and draw them gently back, opening her like a gift box to reveal all that glistening pink.

God, it's beautiful. She wonders vaguely if hers is half this good.

“Please,” Beth is saying again, whimpering, sounding almost pained. “Oh Lori, please, I… I-”

She breaks off into a soft cry as Lori leans in the last couple of inches and seals her lips over that sweet little clit, following Beth’s inspiration and flicking at it with her tongue.

It's occurred to her before, in a speculative kind of way, that a woman might be much better at this than most men by virtue of the pure gut-level knowledge that comes with intimate familiarity. She has no idea whether that's true, but what she does know is that she's not nervous about it, not afraid of doing it badly, as she keeps licking, longer swipes of her tongue, focusing for the moment entirely on that one firy bundle of nerves. Beth doesn't taste like her, but she couldn't say how; it's simply a remarkable difference and she can't seem to get enough of it, briefly leaving Beth’s clit to dip her tongue between her pussy lips, fluttering at her entrance and lapping up the tangy cream gathering there.

Beth is squirming, obviously trying to remain still and failing miserably, hiccuping whines forcing their way out of her decorated with fragments of Lori’s name. Lori raises her eyes, takes in the sight of Beth arching off the couch, head thrown back and her mouth open, her hands finally unfolding to fumble blindly downward. Asking with her motions what she can't make her words do. Begging.

No, Lori doesn’t know if she's any good at it. But it appears that she's doing all right.

She smiles, sweeping her tongue across her sticky lips, and dives back in.

It's getting all over her. Her cheeks, her chin, all the way to her nose. There's nothing neat about this, nothing restrained; unbound, she's nearly burrowing into Beth’s cunt, sucking at her lips and her clit, pushing her tongue in as far as it'll go. Groaning, hoping the vibrations transfer across flesh, dimly aware of her own hand slipping between her legs and rubbing her clit in distracted circles. Beth is cupping the back of her head, fingers tangled in her hair and pushing her even harder in, rolling her hips up to hump Lori’s face in an arhythmic grind.

And for a few seconds she sees this from the perspective of someone else, some voyueristic ghost hovering over them and observing. This nice, respectable housewife and mother of two with her baby sleeping upstairs, on her knees between a set of slender teenage legs, her face buried in a sweet teenage pussy and going to town. _Eating her out,_ licking her up and gulping her down as her fingers rub furiously at herself.

No. Not a ghost.

Rick standing there and watching them, frozen like a man looking upon the face of Medusa.

Inasmuch as she can intend anything, she had intended to wait for Beth, take her pleasure only once Beth had gotten hers, but she can't help it; the image kicks her in the back and she's shuddering and coiling in on herself and coming like another kick in the spine, wet all over her hand and muffling her ragged groan in Beth’s cunt. Not like she's that far ahead; Beth squeaks and tenses up and unfurls like a flower, muffling her own shout with one hand while the other pulls Lori’s hair hard enough to make her eyes water. Flowing into her, onto her tongue, and she's still frantically licking through all of it. Couldn't stop if she wanted to.

Like she ever would.

But she does. Knows when she should, just as Beth starts to push at her and whimper again, leaning against the couch and laying her head against Beth’s thigh with her lips still grazing those throbbing lips. She'd swear she can see the beat of Beth’s pulse in them. In her clit.

The sun hasn't moved. Like no time has passed at all.

For the second time the room is quiet except for their panting, the twitter of birds, growl of a lawnmower somewhere and the bark of a dog. Lazy sounds. Summer sounds. It's so warm in here, and sweat is cooling her skin.

Beth murmurs her name. Nothing more.

For the moment, there's nothing else she wants.

~

Of course it's awkward when they finally get up. It could never have been anything else.

Like some unspoken mutual decision: Lori scoots back and pushes to her feet. Beth gives her a tiny smile as she levers herself up, eyes locked onto Lori’s face with a kind of determination that isn't altogether comfortable. Lori returns it, then stands there while Beth walks away and starts to gather up her scattered clothes, not quite sure what to do. Her own clothes consist of a bikini top and bottom, and given how little that amounts to, it feels weird to put them back on. Somehow not much of a point. But she does, retrieving them from where they fell and somewhat clumsily pulling them on.

She doesn't feel as sexy as she did. She feels faintly ridiculous. Like the top is askew, or the bottom doesn't entirely fit, too tight in the places that should be loose and vice versa.

Only after Beth is dressed does she return to Lori, the strap of her bag over one shoulder. combing her hands through her hair to gather it into an unkempt version of a ponytail. She captures her lower lip with her teeth, and Lori can't mistake it.

She's nervous. Beth is nervous again.

But Lori no longer believes that it's because she wants to stop and she's simply trying to figure out a way to break the news.

Instead Beth pulls in a breath, and as she speaks Lori glances past her to the living room windows and the light beyond, lower and deeper gold than it was. Deeper gold into a deeper afternoon; not late yet, but they've somehow spent hours on each other, though it feels like it can't have been more than thirty minutes or so.

“I should probably go,” Beth murmurs, then her eyes flicker apprehension and she quickly adds, “I mean, unless you need me for somethin’.”

_Unless you need me for more._

Lori shakes her head. No, she doesn’t. Yes, she does, she wants nothing more than to drag this darling girl up to bed with her and stay there until Judith’s hungry fussing drags them apart. But it doesn't feel right. They've already crashed headlong into this, and maybe it's better if they don’t go any further down just now.

Maybe better if, to the extent that they still can, they take their time.

“Go on home, honey.”

“Okay.”

But at the door she pauses and turns again, and her smile is wider. Still small, but no longer nervous. Secret.

Maybe the tiniest bit mischeivous.

“When do you want me to come over tomorrow?”

 _Well_. Suddenly her mouth is dry, parched, close to cracking like drought ground. So this is it. The last thing she needs to be absolutely, categorically certain of this. That it's real, that it's _happening,_ and that they've only begun to scratch the surface of the bounty of delights they might explore together.

_There's so much I want to do._

By some miracle she's talking. “How about ten?”

The whole day, almost. Whole day to do whatever they want. Whatever they please.

Beth nods. “Great. See ya then.”

Lori watches her from one of the front windows, curtain drawn aside. She's not especially visible, or at least she imagines she's not, not all of her, but she also doesn't especially care. Let them see. Let them see a woman approaching middle age, with stretch marks and slightly sagging breasts, wearing a bikini that she suspects would look far more natural on a much younger woman, and watching one of said younger women as she makes her way down the street to a small blue compact, its lights flashing a greeting as she unlocks it. Glowing as the lower sun washes over her, once more that honey-tone. All her tight clothes and bare skin, her hair that seems to invite fingers to skim through it. She's moving casually, as if nothing at all just happened. As if everything is normal.

As she opens the driver’s side door, she pauses and looks up, and though she's some distance away now, Lori can see her eyes, and feels a spike of electricity jab from her nape to her tailbone as Beth’s gaze sears into hers.

Every bit as hungry.

Lori trembles and jerks her hand away from the curtain, lets it fall closed with a whisper. From upstairs, Judith is finally beginning to make herself heard.

Up, to the bedroom. Changing into far more sensible yoga pants and a loose tee. Judith in her arms, a warm safe little weight, rocking her and cooing to her as she carries her to the changing table by the window of the nursery.

Already it's easy to file this afternoon away with the rest of her fantasies. Particularly vivid, particularly immediate, but in point of fact no more real than any of them.

Except that's not true. And tomorrow she'll get verification. Tomorrow at ten.

_There's so much we'll do._

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still processing the enormous new step she and Beth have made, Lori takes a call from Rick. It's uncomfortable. But it does get her mind moving in some satisfying - if petty - new directions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't as long as I usually like my chapters to be, but I continue to struggle a lot with writing these days. Not sure when it'll pick up but I promise to keep truckin' regardless. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading. ❤️

It’s well into the evening and she's scrubbing the couch when Rick calls.

Thing is - and this is drenched such obscene humor - she might be scrubbing it for any reason. As if she wants to savor it, she does what she's apparently made a habit of doing, sends her imagination like a camera out of her head to pan all over herself, and she looks perfectly normal, dressed in jeans and a plain blue cotton t-shirt, bare feet and devoid of accessories, on her knees on the carpet and spot-cleaning the upholstery. It's the very picture of domestic mundanity. Could be anything. Spill of baby food. Juice. Wine.

_Hot wet teenage pussy._

She folds herself to the side and sits, staring at the buzzing phone where it rests on the carpet - every bit as as innocuous as she is - and clamps her damp hand over her mouth to stifle her hysterical laughter. As if he might somehow hear her whether or not she accepts the call, and draw some conclusions.

But she's got herself together, the laughter stowed safely behind her diaphragm, when she thumbs the little green icon and raises the phone to her ear.

“Rick?”

“ _Hi_.” He sounds faintly surprised, and it takes her a few seconds to surmise that he may have been expecting her to ignore him. For some reason she doesn't care to explore much further, she feels vaguely gratified by that.

“Hi.”

“ _Just figured I'd, y’know, check in_.” Pause. Not altogether a comfortable one, and not only on his end. “ _Everything alright?_ ”

She leans back against the seat of the couch, glances at the dark and slightly sudsy oval of wetness. “Fine. Put Judy down for the night. Got nothin’ really going on.” The ceiling is suddenly very interesting. “Thought I might watch some TV.”

Abruptly she's aware that she might be over-explaining. Might sound like she's covering for something. Or not. Christ, she hasn't felt this intensely paranoid since the one time she smoked pot.

Well. One time of two.

No. She's fine. This is fine. She blinks up at the ceiling - the ceiling where barely a few hours ago she fixed her attention on a dancing rainbow, sprawled naked and sweaty on this very couch with an equally naked and sweaty girl in her arms.

“ _Good_.” Another pause, and right as he speaks she realizes she should have returned the question and she heaps a brief pile of silent curses onto herself. That's how this goes. There are rules to this kind of exchange, norms even of Awkward Conversation With Spouse Who’s No Longer Sleeping At Home, and she's violated them. “ _I’m pretty much the same, I guess. TV’s shitty here, though_.”

“What, they don't have HBO or whatever?”

“ _They do. Never would’ve believed there could be so much nothin’ on so many channels._ ” He's smiling and that's good, though she can hear the ruefulness in it, and she finds herself matching it, her eyes still fixed upward and blurring into the warm lamplight.

As always when they do this, it's like a sad kind of conversational jazz. It's all the words they aren't saying.

“Hey, now you're making me not want to. Quit ruining my evening.” Wider smile, though no less rueful. More, in fact, and she wonders if he can tell. Because something she's discovering is that it remains so easy to slip back into the comfortable old rhythms, the gentle teasing, the simplicities in what it's like to talk to Rick Grimes when things are good. They’re a faint echo what they were, but they’re there all the same, and it hurts.

The memory of the taste of Beth’s pussy isn't doing much to salve that particular wound. Not that she would have expected it to.

“ _Sorry_.” Then she hears it just as close and clear as if he said it aloud, because once he would have said it, and it's that rhythm and by now she knows it so well: _Maybe I could come over there, ruin it a little better for you._

And oh, part of her aches for that. Part of her really does.

_Except thanks, but the babysitter took care of me this afternoon. And I mean_ real _good care._

She swipes a hand down her face, lingers a bit at her eyes and presses until she sees sparks bright enough to wash out the last flicker of that insidious rainbow. “Don't worry about it.”

“ _Must be nice. The quiet._ ”

He's lying on his back; she can hear that detail in the subtle strain and edge of his vocal cords. Lying on the motel bed, probably staring at the ceiling as well, and she's sure there's a TV on in the background, light and motion on mute. Maybe he's in his shorts and his undershirt, his head pillowed on the crook of one arm. Quiet there too; his quiet reaching out for hers.

She doesn't want his _quiet_ to reach for her. That's not what she wants at all.

_Are you ready to talk?_

No. She won't ask that. She won't fling that ball out there for him to bobble. She won't embarrass either of them that way. But she's burning inside as she decides this, a searing band of it across her middle like a bitch of a menstrual cramp, more anger and more resentment that she ever would have wanted to feel toward him - this man she promised to love until she fucking died.

And she does. That's still the worst part. She absolutely, wholly does.

“Yeah. It's nice.” _The babysitter moaning her pretty head off while I ate her out was nice, too._ For a single second she clenches her jaw so hard she hears it crack just below her ear. “Beth - girl who sat for me a couple times already? She's gonna start coming over now and then, helping out.”

Why not. Why not toss it out there. It's not like she's admitting to anything.

“ _Yeah?_ ” He sounds moderately interested. “ _With what? Just in general?_ ”

_I guess that's one way of putting it._ “Yeah. Chores, watch Judy if I need to step out. Just, y’know. Whatever needs doing.” _Like me, for example._ “She actually asked me. Said she doesn't have much going on this summer, could use some stuff to do. I think she likes Judy a lot.”

None of this is untrue. She hasn't yet told him a single lie. Dimly, she's impressed; she didn't know there were so many ways to be dishonest with someone. Thanks to him, directly or indirectly, she’s learning all sorts of things. Expanding horizons she didn't even know she had.

“ _Sounds good_.” Brisker. He's running out of places to go, probably looking for an off-ramp. She shouldn't be surprised by the brevity of this exchange. He very possibly doesn't even know exactly why he called. Sure as hell doesn't seem to have entered into it with any specific agenda.

Maybe that shouldn't annoy her. It does.

Well, she’ll do him a favor, find the exit for him. “I should get going, I should check on Judy…” Trailing off, letting him pick it up if he wants to, end this by explicitly mutual agreement rather than simply herding him off the phone. Grant them both that much dignity.

Jesus fucking Christ, she's sick of walking this tightrope.

“ _Yeah. Yeah, I should…_ ” His own trail, winding off into the lonely trees until it vanishes in the shadows. It's a poor pretense. He has nothing to do and they both know it. Lie alone on the bed which is so unignorably not his, watch shitty TV while his mind chases its tail in dizzy growling circles. Lie there and think about what he's done. What he, in all his damned stubbornness, refuses to do.

Good.

“G’night,” she says, rolling over his softer versions of the syllables, a little hasty. So hasty, in fact, that it's only after she cuts the call that she realizes what neither of them said.

_I love you._

She draws her knees up to her chest, lets the phone slip from her fingers and hit the floor with a muffled thump as she stares blankly at the folds of the half closed drapes. There's an odd numbness in her bare toes, and her stomach is doing something she doesn't quite know how to define, except it feels a bit like a clumsy child attempting a somersault and badly failing.

They always say it. Always. She doesn't know when they last said goodbye to each other and didn't say it. It's not a habit, at least not from her end; she thinks about it every time, because he's very careful and Shane is usually with him, and it's so safe around here, he hasn't needed to so much as draw his weapon on anyone in the last half year, but he still carries a gun and every day is a day he _might_ need to use it, and if a situation gets bad enough for that…

Every time she says goodbye to him is important. Every single time. And this time, she didn't say it.

She turns her head, looks at the phone with her mouth pulled into a thin line, teeth digging into the backs of her lips. She could pick it up, call him back, say it then.

Maybe he would say more.

No. He won't. She's not going to bother with hope where that's concerned. She braces a hand on the couch and turns herself over with a sigh so heavy she feels her lungs droop as it leaves her, picks up the rag - still damp and pleasantly cool, and she fights back the odd urge to press it to her forehead - and goes back to work.

~

Later, doing her own lying on her back, on her bed, listening to the humming night with the caress of the cool air tightening her nipples into hard little buds. She's pretty sure he wasn't naked when he called, though who knows, but she sure as shit is, and it feels wonderfully decadent.

Sweating glass of chardonnay on the beside table, the beads of moisture shimmering slightly in the muted light. She hasn't touched it since she set it down and flopped onto the mattress, but she's looking at it now, allowing her eyes to unfocus as if those pretty beads form one of those 3D pictures she can draw out if she stares long enough.

What that picture might be.

Her mind has apparently set up camp in the filthiest territory and even if she wanted it to leave with any real sincerity, she doubts she could make it happen.

Here's the thing: She hopes he _was_ naked. He likely wasn't, but she’s imagining how it would look if he was, detaching her inner sight once more and sending it racing around his meager little room. Running up and down his body, his lines and angles, ridges of his jaw and collarbones and the nicely toned muscles of his arms and chest and belly. Never been much of a gym rat, has Rick Grimes, but he takes care of himself.

He looks good. She imagines him like this and it's more than enough to excite her lust.

_Her lust._ Because she can no longer ignore that it's something she has. The name for it, the proper noun. Not _desire,_ not that graceful romance novel word. What she feels is fiery and ravenous. What she feels is a lion crouched to spring on a lamb.

She really doesn't think he knows.

Like this, he’s fully hers, and she can have him slick his hand with spit and place it on his cock and make him stroke it hard, make his jaw clench with what he's not getting. _Yes. Yes, you cowardly bastard, get yourself off because I'm sure as hell not doing it for you._ Her legs spreading and her fingers wandering between them, idly feeling her way through coarse curls. Unless he brought some woman back from a bar or picked up a hooker - and she very much doubts either thing - his own hand is all he's had for weeks now, but this afternoon she got hers and then some, and as it turns out she doesn't need him to satisfy her.

She's playing with herself _at_ him, aiming it like a slap, circling her clit with a soft throaty laugh. All at once cutting her inner film into splitscreen - Rick’s sad, lonely jerkoff session on one side and on the other Beth all laid out for her, perfectly naked, pussy shining below her blond bush and her sweet tits heaving as she arches and groans.

_Please, Lori. Oh, God, please. I want you so bad._

There's a hotly nasty spite in the way she's plunging her fingers in and out of her cunt, raising her legs to make it easier and biting her lip - because she could be a lot louder than this and perversely Judith is always more wakeful at night. Wet smacking sounds as she fucks herself with one set of fingers, attends to her clit with her others, and she knows she's going to make Beth do this to her, maybe even tomorrow, and if how today went is any indication she doesn't imagine she’ll have to do much coaxing. Those clever little fingers in her pussy and that clever little tongue flicking at her nipples, lithe young body all hers to toy with and to teach and to corrupt, and _fuck you, Rick,_ because she doesn't need him anymore, Beth whispering _no, no, you don’t, I’ll take care of you, Lori, I'll give you whatever you want, we’re gonna have so much fun and I'm gonna make you feel so good…_

Dim light swelling like a bursting star behind her eyes as she crunches herself up and down and frantically muffles her cry, coming slippery all over her hand, and behind that cry is all the mean laughter she would never give voice to but which she feels right down to the bottom of her gut.

This is all a tremendous joke at his expense, and he deserves every fucking bit of it.

She lies there for a long time, gasping, feet tangled in the rumpled sheets she's kicked down to the foot of the bed, her hand lightly curled and sticky at her side and her other resting on her stomach. Feeling it rise and fall as she drifts back down. After a few moments of this, her lips curve into a lazy smile, and she rolls onto her side and pushes up on her elbow, reaches for the glass of wine and drinks deep of its smooth, buttery coolness.

In her mind, she doesn't even let him come.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As she promised, Beth returns the next day. Many of the reasons are innocent - there are indeed chores to do and a baby who needs sitting. But of course there are far less innocent reasons. Such as a fortuitous grocery run and an inspired purchase, and more than one way to split a pint of ice cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got out of hand. Lori agrees. 
> 
> ❤️

She's not nervous. 

Thing is, she's genuinely not. She might have expected her stomach to be in knots when she wakes up; it’s decidedly knot-free. Knotless. She lies in bed for a little while, staring up at the blank expanse of the ceiling and feeling the sun making its unhurried way across her bare skin, and when Judith’s fussing reaches her from the next room over, she kicks the sheets aside and gets easily to her feet, plucks her robe off the hook on the back of the door, pads barefoot down the hall with her fingers working at the ties. 

She yawns. But she's not tired. She slept exceptionally well. It's the kind of yawn that comes from pleasant laziness - from the knowledge that there's nothing she desperately needs to do today, that after she feeds Judith she could go right back to bed if she wanted to. 

Except she can't. Carrying Judith downstairs, she glances at the clock by the door, and while the stomach-knots don't arrive after all… 

It's about fifteen minutes to nine.

Hour and a quarter. 

What to do with it? Preparing a bottle of formula, testing it against her wrist - warmth on skin, flesh, hands, touching. Her eyes flutter briefly closed. She's never had her psyche taken over like this, by pure refined _sex_ and every part of it from every angle and every position, and the conclusion she's coming to is that she likes it. A lot. Still a bit nerve-wracking, and she's still not sure to do with the world outside the front door - the world in which people generally disapprove of married women in their thirties screwing nubile seventeen-year-old babysitters - but she also feels that she can safely ignore it for now. She's not looking to take Beth out to dinner, or dancing, or a movie or whatever. She's not looking to _date._

Except for a few heady seconds she entertains the thought, going out with her and making it look completely innocent, could be aunt and niece or mother and daughter having a nice, respectable dinner in a nice, respectable way, while all the time the two of them know better. 

Sliding her foot up Beth’s calf under the table. Sitting close enough to get a hand on her knee. Her thigh. Ask her to wear a skirt, something short, and slide her evil hand between- 

She sucks in a trembling breath, braces one hand on the counter. _Get a grip._

Yeah, she'd love to. 

 But it's not driving her crazy. It's not making her _feel_ crazy. Sitting on the couch with her baby daughter in her arms, the pleasant little weight nearly making her drowse as she feeds her, she can remember what was done on this couch in a yesterday that feels like years in the past, and what conflict she discerns between those two things only makes the low heat in her flare the smallest bit hotter. 

Later, in the shower - leisurely, she still has at least half an hour - she runs her soapy hands over her body, lightly teasing herself as she fixes those two images side by side in her mind: Reclining with a baby cuddled against her breast and then all a loose sprawl with a beautiful girl lying naked between her legs. Murmuring endearments against a downy baby head and whispering the filthiest things against that girl’s sweetly soaked cunt. 

She can be these two things at once. She can be someone who would do them. 

Perhaps that's just what she needs to be, right now. 

~ 

Judith is lying in her playpen and laughing as she bats at a dangling mobile of happy and violently colored fish when the doorbell rings. 

The front door isn't closed - the day is too nice for AC and it's good to have a breeze flowing through the house - and Beth resembles a dream through the gray mesh of the screen, her form both clear and indistinct, sun running like gentle fingers over her hair. Seconds before she opens it, Lori notes that she _does_ appear nervous, though not intensely so, not like yesterday, and rather than set her own nerves off, she's finding it more than a little cute. 

Maybe more than cute. Maybe enticing, that inexperienced hesitancy. Inviting judicious coaxing that stops just short of coercion. 

For fuck’s _sake,_ she's not going to ravish this girl two seconds after she walks in, at least not with a baby playing mere feet away. She does have limits.

Probably. 

“Beth. Hi.” She opens the door and moves aside; smile, sunny and big but not too big, not fake, because it doesn't _need_ to be fake. Totally aside from the slow throb settled between her thighs, it's good to see Beth. It's nice. Possibly it's nicer than being alone in the house with the baby all day, welcome quiet or no. 

Beth returns the smile as she steps over the threshold - not as wide but as sunny, and most of the nervousness fades. Once more she has that pack slung over her shoulder, and Lori feels a small tug of curiosity. “Hey.” 

Brief pause then, and Lori is abruptly unsure of what to do next, but Beth solves that problem for her, walks into the living room and unshoulders her pack, deposits it by the couch and turns. “So what's on deck for today?” 

Lori arches a brow. The question is resisting being made sense of. “I'm sorry?” 

“What you need done,” Beth says patiently. “Like, if you got anything specific you want me to help with. I got a car, I can do whatever.” 

Completely innocent offer that could go in all sorts of extremely non-innocent directions, and Lori’s gaze flicks left to the couch. But no. No, she doesn't actually want that. It feels cheap somehow, asking her over and then diving right into what they'll very likely end up doing anyway. It would be as if, she thinks, Beth is some kind of _booty call,_ like Lori wanted her to come over to satisfy a very particular urge and not for much else. 

That's not what she wants this to be. She's seen nothing from Beth that would indicate that _Beth_ wants that either. Even offering to help out over the summer, knowing full well what that would mean, the offer to _help out_ was perfectly genuine. Still is.

So she crosses her arms, shrugs. “Not a lot specifically. I got some dusting you can do, if you feel like it. Oh, and.” Inspiration striking. “I need to make a grocery run, you could watch Judy while I’m out.” 

“Yeah, absolutely.” Beth flashes her another smile. “Whatever you need.” 

Another pause, much less awkward. But Beth is looking at her, sweeping her tongue across her lips, and Lori is reasonably sure that _that_ iteration of the offer wasn't nearly as innocuous as the last. Not quite as straightforwardly immediate as _rip my clothes off and do me right here right now right on the damn floor,_ but making it clear, in a well-mannered way, that such a thing is on the table. 

“Great. I'll go in a bit.”

Not just yet. She could, there's really no reason not to and in fact the earlier she goes the quicker she’ll get through the checkout lane and home, but she doesn't want to. She wants to stand here and watch as Beth turns and steps past the loveseat toward the back wall and the slim row of cherry bookshelves that line part of it. She's moving idly, not with any discernible intent; she's wandering, and Lori is inclined to let her wander. Observe her movements, the slim and slightly gawky lines of her body in motion through the clear brightness of a summer morning. Enjoy it entirely for what it is. 

Beth reaches out and runs a hand along the shelf at the level of her chest. The sun is falling across the wood, giving it a rich gloss. There's nothing to be especially proud of on the shelves themselves, nothing to mark high culture of any kind - some novels of the book-of-the-month variety and a battered set of encyclopedias that were a high school graduation present to Rick from his uncle, a dense biography of Lincoln that she can't remember how they acquired and can't recall if she's ever cracked let alone read. An ironic snow globe she picked up on a trip to Phoenix, a roughly carved wooden horse that she picked up on a whim at a church rummage sale. The kind of stuff she imagines populates the bookshelves of a hundred thousand boring normal middle class households anywhere in the country. 

But Beth isn't looking at the books, or the knickknacks. She doesn't appear to see them at all. Lori can't quite make out her face, but the set of her shoulders is expressive enough, the fractional bow of her head. Whatever she's feeling, it's not as idle as her hand. 

“Pretty,” she murmurs. 

“Wedding present from my mom.” Lori takes a few steps forward, but some instinct whispers to her to allow Beth some space. “My grandma had them, originally.” 

“We had somethin’ like them at the farm.” The realization of what's happening here hits Lori like a fist to the chest, but Beth doesn't sound sad, or it's not the primary emotion at play.  Mostly she's thoughtful. “I don't… I actually don't know where they came from. They were just always there.” She sighs. “I wish they had made it out.” 

“I'm sorry, honey.” Because she's not sure what the hell else to say, and yet feels the urge to say _something_. She trusts that if it's not totally appropriate, Beth will overlook it. 

Beth rolls a shoulder and glances back. The corner of her lips is pulling upward just a touch, a curve edged with far too much regret. “It's okay. I wish a lotta stuff had made it out. Mama and Shawn most, like of _course…_ but there was hardly anythin’ left. At all. We lost just about everythin’. So we had to start over in this way that… I don't think I can explain it to anyone. But seein’ somethin’ like this, sometimes it comes back. It's not all bad.” 

Closer. Feeling… She would have her own trouble explaining. Like she wants to reach out, it seems like she _should,_ and yet she's not certain she has the right. Not certain it's her place. The last time they talked about this, Beth was the one hugging her, and obviously that ended in an interesting situation, but it's all different now, and although she's been close to this girl in a way she's never been close to any other woman in her life, a simple hug is… 

_Oh, just fucking do it._

So she does. It's half from behind, a bit clumsy, but Beth loosens into her arms when they curl around her and turns, wraps her own arms around Lori’s waist, settles her head against her chest. It's perfectly chaste and yet there's an intimacy in it that blocks off Lori’s breath and sets her eyes burning. 

This is how it started. She needed someone, and Beth was there. And Beth didn't run. 

Lori doubts she's going to. 

It might become awkward. Nearly does. But then Beth is taking the initiative and pulling back enough to look up, and Lori catches a glimpse of eyes so piercingly and vividly green-blue before Beth raises herself on her toes and presses their lips together.

Like the embrace, it could be chaste. Almost. What's behind it, powering it - it's not the same as that heat that's become Lori’s drive and her tormentor and sent her reeling into this territory she still has no clue how to navigate. It's something softer, and while sex is there because it's apparently _everywhere…_

That's not what Beth wants from this. Not right now. 

But Lori does bring a hand up to cup Beth’s jaw, tilting her head and pressing in a little firmer, giving her the lightest flick of tongue before she withdraws. And sure, maybe it was only a flick, but she's pretty confident that she's not imagining the flush in Beth’s round cheeks, hint of a sparkle in those piercing eyes. 

“I… Yeah.” She steps back and away - _breaking_ away - but Lori isn't stung by it. It's not that the moment was unwanted. It's that the moment is over. “I can do that dustin’, if you want.” Beat of silence as she glances around the room. “What needs it?” 

Lori shrugs. “A lot of things. I somehow never seem to get round to it. But honestly…” She tips her chin up at the bookshelf. “That could use it. I don't know when I last even touched the thing.” 

“Oh.” That bright - just about literally - smile returns to her face. “Okay, great.” 

A hiccuping whimper from behind them; Judith, and by now Lori is intimately familiar with the specific fussing that signals the requirement for a diaper change. For a number of reasons the timing seems perfect and she heads over to the playpen, scooping Judith up into her arms and tossing “I’ll be back, dust rags’re under the sink” over her shoulder as she goes. 

Upstairs feels like more neutral territory, the remnant of a space carved out from the world outside. The nursery is a bastion of normality. Maybe even of _safety._ It's not precisely like it's a relief, being in here with Judith babbling happily on the changing table in front of her - all things right with the world now that she's gotten what she wanted - but it's not so far off from that. At any rate, she can breathe more easily, _think_ more easily without steady little pulses of _I want_ thrumming from her cunt into her veins.

And what’s hitting her now - a message finally able to get through from one part of her mind to the rest of it - is how this scrap of normality is in fact not limited to this room. 

She's thinking about it again and even more clearly later, pushing her grocery cart up and down the aisles of the Kroger. Conforming to what must be some kind of natural law of grocery carts, she's picked one with a bad wheel and it’s wobbling and squealing all over the place, and although in more sane days it would be drilling into her head and filling her with the weird certainty that she's becoming the loudest thing in the store, right now it's faded into the background. Most of her surroundings have gone with it, and she's on autopilot, squeaking through the chill of the produce section and on into the cereals, the breads, spices and soups and condiments, a kaleidoscope of garishly colored labels blurring into messy Impressionism. 

What happened between when she finished with Judith and when she left the house only added to this sense: that, all other things being equal, part of this is and has the potential to remain _normal,_ at least on the surface. 

Beth came over. Got instructions. Dusted. Now she's watching the baby. She's _babysitting,_ and in the middle of lifting a bag of potato chips off the shelf, she realizes that she's been drawing up a mental list of the other chores that she's been neglecting, that would go so much more easily and quickly with an extra pair of hands. 

Eventually she’ll run out of dusting _,_ and what happens then is anyone’s guess. 

But _she_ guesses that she might be able to come up with something. 

Regardless. This really might be, to some degree, exactly what it ostensibly was in the beginning. The kind of arrangement that any housewife home all day might establish with any neighborhood girl with some free summer time on her hands. _Normal._

Which is exactly why it's so bizarre. 

She didn't leap across a line from one country into the next. She's straddling it. This border is highly porous and so far there's a lot of traffic back and forth. She's beginning to wonder if compartmentalization as a strategy is going to work.

She's beginning to wonder if it should.

Anyway, case in point: abruptly on the verge of swinging the cart clumsily toward the checkout line, she instead veers into the frozen foods. 

Toward the ice cream. 

Kroger. Shopping. So normal. So mundane. And yet what her gleefully perverse brain has just turned it into is anything but.

She's smiling most of the way home.

~ 

Smiling still when she pushes open the door, and immediately Beth is coming forward to take bags from her. Not one or two but four, and she's about to protest that she’s got the rest, Beth doesn't need to trouble- 

“I'm a farm girl,” Beth calls gaily, halfway to the kitchen. “Remember?” Still visible, she hefts the bags, and the flexing muscles in her arms are indeed nothing to scoff at. Lori stands there, bemused, wondering why she didn't notice that feature before and wondering what other surprises along the same lines might be in store for her.

Then she remembers she's holding the ice cream. It's a warm day. It would be a pity if it melted. 

It would be a pity if it melted before she wants it to. 

~ 

Putting away groceries turns out to be yet another figurative neutral zone; being focused as it is around a task that takes up just enough of your attention. Even more, because Beth has to be told where a few things go, though she does know where the pantry is. 

There's not a ton, though Lori did end up buying more than she intended - she's putting it down to the autopilot - and it doesn't take long. She's handling the single bag of frozen items, and she's got all but one stuffed into an already crammed freezer when she hears the _clack_ of Beth’s boots on the linoleum behind her. 

She pulls in a breath. The truth - God’s honest terrible truth - is that from the second she turned right instead of left in the Kroger, she had a plan, and so far it's going perfectly. It's not a complicated plan, it frankly would have been difficult to fuck up, but it's even the small things: the rhythm of their movements, the idly musical tone of Beth’s voice, the lines of her body, roll of her hips and full ass hugged by her cutoffs and the long legs below their ragged hems, those strong bare arms, the pace at which she's breathing. The temperature: warm but not too warm, and the freezer cold is hardening her nipples through her shirt. The light: indirect through the big windows, a bit gauzy, almost like something out of a movie.

And her, when Lori turns with the ice cream - creamy French vanilla, because there's no need to get too fancy here and also _vanilla_ frankly strikes her as ironic - in her hands.

Light-caught. Light-soaked, all that filmy gold. Left strap of her loose tank top perilously close to slipping off her shoulder. Lori is absolutely sure it's not intentional, but the effect… 

It's been a very long time, and she hasn't picked it up since, but in college she did read _Lolita_ , and she remembers enough. And she didn't mistake that narrative for anything other than what it was, it was for a course and she knows full well about _unreliable narrators,_ but the way it was written, the language, the _rapture_ of it. The sense of desire permeating everything. Tiny details. The entire sensory world transformed. 

She's dimly aware that she's staring. 

Beth is staring back, blinking, smile teasing her mouth, clearly the smallest bit confused. Christ knows how long Lori has been standing here in silence, gazing at this golden vision in a loose tank top and cutoffs, with cold air from the open freezer pouring all down her back and a pint of ice cream chilling her palm. 

She clears her throat, reaches back and nudges the door closed. The sound of the seal catching is very loud. The shock of the sudden temperature shift pushes a little gasp out of her. 

Beth echoes it. Her eyes drop to the ice cream. Back up to Lori’s face. She licks her lips, and it's all Lori can do in this world or any other to keep from lunging at her like a goddamn _animal._

“I picked it up,” Lori says, and her voice is shockingly calm, “‘cause I thought you might like it.” She pauses. Steps closer. It's as if her body is an actor in the porn film she ran through her head back there in the car, and her consciousness is merely an observer of her own fantasy. She's no longer guiding herself. She's only watching. 

Taking it in. 

“You like vanilla?”

“I.” Beth swallows, and there's that hesitancy again, this time entirely divorced from nervousness and nothing at all like reluctance. More like _bashfulness_ than anything else. “Yeah. I like it a lot.” 

“Is it your favorite?” 

She breathes a laugh, shakes her head. Reaching up, fingering that sagging strap, and this time it’s completely self-aware. Can't be anything else. “No. My favorite is chocolate.” Flash of white teeth. “Chocolate chocolate chip.” 

“Sorry, sweetie, I should’ve asked.” Closer. Not taking her eyes off Beth’s face, she leans over and pulls open the silverware drawer, plucks out a spoon. “I'll get that next time.” 

“It's okay. Like I said, I like it a lot.” She's so close now, heat from her skin drifting across Lori’s forearms, the backs of her hands. Smell of the shampoo she used this morning, and something more, something light but far too complex to be merely floral - a whiff of perfume.

_Honey, did you wear that for me?_

“I was thinking we could share it,” Lori says, perfectly casual, and good _lord,_ this _is_ a porno, and it would be ridiculous if it wasn't making her so fucking hot. “You might like it even better if we do.” 

She's going to ask a final and very important question, but Beth beats her to it in a husky whisper. And that really clinches the deal.

“Judy’s sleepin’.” 

Lori lays a hand on the center of her chest and gently pushes her backward toward the breakfast table.

Beth goes unprotestingly, though it's clumsy, and when her ass hits the edge of the table she grasps it with both hands. She's breathing hard, pink lips parted, and only now - again, a detail that it’s strange she didn't pick up on before - does she notice that Beth is sporting  a subtle layer of lip gloss, just enough to accentuate. Just enough to invite. 

Maybe it wasn't for Lori at all, none of it. But it's fun to imagine that it was. 

She sets the ice cream down beside Beth and presses in, hands finding her slim waist, settling on her full hips. Lips barely brushing as she speaks. “Take everything off and hop up, honey.” 

She could help. It would be so, so good to help. And part of her is shouting at her to do it, not merely because she wants to but because this isn't _her,_ standing back and watching a girl strip because she's ordered her to do so. Watching it - again - like a damn show.

Rick has never in his life been this bold with her. 

Maybe he should have been. Maybe if he had, if he had unleashed himself that much, a lot of this bullshit could have been avoided.

Doesn't matter now. This matters, and Beth isn't taking it slow. Her movements are slightly jerky, uncoordinated; this is not a striptease - _though it might be if you asked for that_. But that seems over the top and this is perfect: Beth letting her tank top drop to the floor and reaching back to unsnap her bra - plain white cotton this time too, how wonderful - unsnapping her fly and thumbing her shorts and panties together down her thighs-

Lori has to get her breath. Has to drag it back in. She's gripping the spoon so tight it hurts.

“Leave the boots on.” 

Beth glances up, in the middle of bending to tug them off, brows arched in faint surprise. “Really?” 

“Yeah. I like them.” _They're you,_ she nearly says, and doesn't, and she's not sure why. 

“Alright.” She steps out of the twin circles of her shorts and stands there wearing nothing but a the boots and a shy smile and a little gold pendant and a small stack of bracelets on her left wrist, her hands hanging uncertainly at her sides, shifting from foot to foot. 

Lori sucks in a breath. Because all at once she's not sure she can actually handle this. “Oh. Sweetie.” 

Beth fingers a loose strand of her hair, tucks it behind her ear, and ducks her head, still with that smile. She could not possibly be more adorable if she tried, and if she is trying, it's not needed.

“You really like lookin’ at me?” 

 “God, Beth, you're beautiful,” she murmurs, and when a furious crimson floods into Beth’s cheeks and ears and chest - all the way down to her pert little tits - Lori remembers the self-consciousness she displayed yesterday.

_I'm really small._

She's going to make it her mission in life to make Beth understand.

“So are you.” Beth flicks her gaze up, though her head remains bowed. “Am I gonna get to see you?” 

“Soon. Not right away.” She returns her hands to Beth’s waist and glides them swiftly up her sides, stopping to cup the undersides of those _really small_ tits. She sweeps her thumbs over delightfully tightening nipples, and a shudder rolls down Beth’s core. “I wanna make you feel good first, baby. Go on, like I said. Hop up.” 

It takes Beth a second; then she gets it, and pushes herself easily up to sit on the table, boots dangling and legs slightly apart. And Lori is thanking whatever god wants anything to do with this spectacle that there's nothing on it at the moment but a few bills, and then fighting back laughter as she thinks of yet another place she’s going to have to be a good housewife and clean. 

Except no. No, Beth will probably cover this job for her, and do it with a great big smile. 

She maneuvers herself in between Beth’s legs, coaxing them apart and taking her by the shoulders, pressing her back and down. The table is round with enough room on every side to move freely, and she pushes aside the chairs next to her, makes a quick circuit and removes the rest of them. 

So now she has a pretty girl all spread out for her like a damn _banquet,_ a multi-course meal. And oh, does she intend to eat her fill. 

She tosses the spoon onto the tabletop. Fuck it; she's not going to need it. This is going to be messy, and it absolutely should be. She has a feeling that if it's not, she's doing it wrong.

As she picks up the ice cream and tears off the plastic seal, Beth is watching her, wide-eyed, hands restless on her belly and her chest rising and falling with each shallow breath. Lori can see her practically _vibrating,_ her thighs squeezing together and parting again, and she knows, she knows as sure as she knows anything at all anymore, that if she slipped a hand between those thighs, she would feel a dam-break of hot slickness coating her fingers. 

“What’re you gonna do?” 

No way is the innocent tone anything but play. Lori smiles warmly at her, tugging off the lid, and moves around the table so that she's standing directly over Beth’s head. “I think you know exactly what I'm gonna do.” 

“Lori-” Breathy gasp, and Lori leans down and silences her with her mouth, ice cream briefly forgotten as she thrusts her tongue past Beth’s lips. Nothing gentle in this now; again she's overtaken by that ravenousness and she pushes in, tastes her, gives her lips a quick bite before she pulls back. Beth whimpers - no mistaking the need in that sound - and Lori runs two fingers through the ice cream, scoops it up, sucks the cool sweetness off them. 

“Want a taste, honey?” Not even waiting for a nod; she goes back in for more, and this time instead of swallowing she bends again, returns to Beth’s mouth, delivers the treat with her own tongue. 

Instantly she gets the reaction she wanted. Beth moans like she's every bit as hungry and presses up, capturing Lori’s tongue and sucking at it, hands rising to comb into Lori’s hair. Keeping her where she is, and for the moment Lori’s content to be kept, bracing herself up on the table and devouring this mouth that was sweet long before the ice cream ever touched it. 

But only for the moment. Then she's tugging herself away, ignoring Beth’s disappointed whine, piling more ice cream onto her fingers and lowering them to Beth’s lips. If it's inspiration, it’s still nothing she has to think about, and as Beth’s lips part and she takes Lori’s fingers in, Lori drops a mindless hand between her own legs and palms herself uselessly through a thick denim seam that refuses to give her the friction she wants. 

She's going to drive herself insane. 

That's the point. That's the plan. 

For a while - she's honestly not certain how long - that’s all it is. Alternating her fingers and her mouth, feeding it to Beth tiny portions at a time. Exploring that warm, wet mouth as slowly as she wants to, mapping it with every touch, tracing the lines of her lips, the points of her teeth. Beth’s _tongue,_ God, that alone is glorious, and of course the first place her mind goes to is what else she might get Beth to do with that writhing tongue. 

What else Beth might be eager to do. 

At some point she becomes aware that her fingers aren't stationary; they're moving in and out, pumping slowly, and she realizes what she's doing and her knees just about buckle.

Is this being a man, when she does this? Is this what being a man is like? Spreading something out and holding it down and just _taking_ it? Pushing into it, invading it, even if the other party wants nothing more than to be invaded. When Rick is rough, demanding, does he feel this way? 

If so, how is he ever anything else? 

She's going to find something else to put in that mouth. Maybe more than one thing. She’s going to see what it looks like when Beth is sucking something truly substantial. 

Only not now. Now she's straightening up and shifting, moving to the side, trailing her sticky fingers down Beth’s throat. But watching her hands. Something about those hands. 

“How about you don't move unless I say.” 

Sort of a suggestion. But also sort of not. Beth hisses, twitches, and for half a second Lori thinks she might say no - but then her hands drop limp to her sides and she takes a deep breath, another, closes her eyes. A delicious picture of acquiescence.

“Oh, that's a good girl.” She’s grinning. She's not sure how she's supposed to _not_ grin, grin like a wolf looming over a lamb. “I promise I'm gonna take care of you.” 

Beth’s nipples have been tight peaks for a while now, but when Lori reaches one with a creamy finger and draws a circle around it, she would swear it tightens even more. Looks almost uncomfortable, Lori thinks dreamily, just as tight nipples can be. If that's the case, they deserve some soothing. 

Back into the ice cream, and Beth jerks as Lori deposits a sizable dollop of vanilla right onto that suckable little nub. 

Beth was actually reluctant to show these tits to her. She gets why, but it's such a crying shame. She has no idea. 

“I know, it's cold. Hold still, sweetie. Do what I said.” She's not waiting for an answer, any promise of obedience. She lowers her head and fastens her lips onto Beth’s nipple and sucks up all that sugary cream as Beth’s muscles hitch and twist. Like this, Lori can just see her face beyond the ridge of her jaw as she arches her neck, and captures that glimpse of her eyes squeezed closed and her features pulled into what might be a bare-teeth grimace of pain. 

Maybe it _is,_ a little. Lori gives her a slow swirl of her tongue, follows it up with the gentlest bite, rolling the hard flesh between her teeth. And Lori is willing to make some allowances as this situation changes, and doesn't do anything to stop it as Beth’s hands snap up to her face to frantically muffle her keening. 

Has anyone ever done this to her? Lori finds herself wondering as she pushes herself over Beth’s quivering body and briefly tongues the other before she gives it the same treatment. Has anyone ever taken their time with her this way, especially in such a weird set-up? This is all her first time with a woman; what about what boys have done for her? 

Vanishingly unlikely that they've done anything remotely like this - and Lori abruptly recognizes this small surge in her chest as pride, and wonders at it. But it's true. No way a teenage boy would have the imagination for this. No way a teenage boy would have the _patience_. 

But then again, Rick has never done this to her either. 

She thought as far as the table and the ice cream. She didn't think much beyond that, and now she considers her options in a lucid place above the ferocious heat pounding into every swell and fold of her pussy. Finish Beth off with her hand - that would be delightful, stay up here and suck her nipples swollen as Lori’s fingers dance across her aching clit. Or she could crouch down and do it with her mouth - it would be so, so good to have that again. But. crouching might be awkward, she thinks as she gives Beth another and less gentle bite. Easy for knees to get tired that way, even if it would probably be worth it. Though of course, she could also-

Like a goddamn cartoon lightbulb appearing over her head. It's so obvious. Still a bit awkward, but even so. And it fits the ludicrousness of the rest of this. Fits it to a T. 

One final lap, then she's rising and setting the ice cream down and turning, and as Beth released a dazed, questioning sound, she turns back, scraping one of the chairs across the floor. Beth is watching her, eyes wide and skin flushed so bright, as Lori sits down in it and slides it in like she's having something as mundane as coffee and toast. 

She rises and settles her hands on Beth’s waist. “Scoot down, honey.” 

Once more, that confused, quavering sound and a flash of gold as Beth lifts her head and peers down. Her expression is just as confused as her tone, but already she's complying all the same, bending her knees and levering herself down with her hands, her upper body slightly raised.

And all over again, the sheer fact of how _beautiful_ this girl is slams into Lori as hard as if Beth had kicked her in the chest. Drenched in soft early afternoon sun, the muscles in her powerful arms flexing as she moves, her hair a glorious golden tangle freeing itself from the confines of her ponytail and her puffy lips parted and shining. The gleam of the vanilla tracks Lori left on her chest and small heaving breasts and high on her belly. Coming closer, revealed for her between Beth’s spreading legs, the wet heaven of her pussy, blond curls glistening and fat dark pink lips slick. Her clit as the apex of the whole image, swollen and exposed and so ready for Lori’s mouth to tend to it. 

Lori slides her hands under the plump curves of Beth’s ass and lifts her, encourages her to roll her lower body upward, murmurs _oh yes, honey, right there like that, that’s perfect._

Beth is shivering all over, her breath coming in shallow, desperate pulls, and when Lori bends and leans in and gives her a slow, merciless lick, her hands barely make it to her mouth in time. 

No way it's going to take long, and that's almost disappointing, because she could eat this meal for hours, alternating long and slow with hard and fast, light flicks and flutters against Beth’s clit, pressing in so deep she pulls back with pussy juice painting her cheeks and chin, even her fucking _nose._ She’s laughing, rolling chuckles over Beth’s low moans; God, she's never heard herself make that sound before. All amused satisfaction and pleasure as she sits at her table and feasts on Beth Greene’s sweet cunt and rocks her hips mindlessly against pressure that infuriatingly refuses to be there. 

Later. She has everything she wants right fucking now. 

Not long at all. It feels like mere seconds before those choked moans crescendo into a choked squeal and Beth goes stiff, legs drawn up and stretched open, and then collapses into shudders so intense that make the table rattle on its legs and her boots thump against the wood. Lori grips her, refuses to let up though her jaw is beginning to cramp, refuses to let go; she _wants_ this and she's going to eat and drink her fill, and even when Beth is groping and weakly batting at her, trying to wriggle away to spare her poor worn out clit, she doesn't immediately release. 

Then she does, elbows braced on her knees as she bends forward as if she's been running, panting, hair hanging in her face, the scent and taste of Beth so all-pervading that she might believe she never stopped. She lingers in it, eyes closed, fingertips nudging between her lips and feeding herself a delicious mingling of sugar and pussy. 

“Lori,” Beth whispers. “Oh. Oh God, Lori. Oh my _God._ ” The last word melts into a weak little giggle, her hands flopping loose at her sides and her legs dangling. Like her climax washed through her and took all her bones. 

Lori glances up at her, breathes a laugh, rests her forehead against Beth’s knee. She's still nearly ripping her jeans open to get herself off - since Beth will be out of commission for a bit - but she can wait. She can wait until it's right. She doesn't need anything this complicated, anything this _choreographed,_ but she thinks she probably owes herself better than her own fingers. 

Beth owes her, if it comes to that. 

“Yeah.” Slowly, she gets to her feet, arching and wincing when a series of cracks roll from the midpoint of her spine all the way up to her neck. She catches Beth’s big blue eyes managing to focus on her as she giggles again.

“I'm all sticky.”

“Mhmm. You’re not the only one.” She circles the table, gliding her fingertips up Beth’s taut stomach and between her breasts, and stops cupped over one as she bends one more time to place a soft upside-down kiss on Beth’s lips.

Flick of tongue. Not hers; Beth’s. When she raises her head, Beth is grinning.

“We should take a shower.” 

“Oh. Sweetie.” That earns her another kiss, a little less quick. A little more tongue. _What a clever girl_. “That's the best idea I've heard all day.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are EFFIN RAD you guys


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